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Hamilton College. 



INAUGURATION 



•OF- 



President Stryker, 



January 17, 1893. 



THE 



INAUGURATION 



OF 



Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, D. D., LL D. 



AS THE 



Ninth President of Hamilton College, 



IN THE 



PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CLINTON, N. Y. 



ON 



Tuesday, January 17, 1893. 



Published by the Trustees. 



UTICA, N. Y.: 

L. C. CHILDS & SON, PRINTERS. 

1893. 






v^>: 



^ 



\% 



"No GREAT HISTORY OF OUR GOVERNMENT CAN BE WRIT- 
TEN WHICH DOES NOT MAKE THIS STATE OF NEW YORK ITS 
CENTRAL POINT. AS THIS TRUTH SHALL BE IMPRESSED UPON 
OUR PEOPLE, NOT ONLY WILL THE INTEREST IN THE CHARAC- 
TER OF SAMUEL KIRKLAND INCREASE, BUT THE COLLEGE HE 
FOUNDED AS A MEANS OF EDUCATION TO THE INDIAN, AS WELL 
AS THE WHITE MAN, WILL BE REGARDED AS A MEMORIAL OF 
A RACE WHICH AT ONE TIME HELD DESPOTIC RULE OVER A 
REGION GREATLY EXCEEDING THE UNITED TERRITORIES OF 
FRANCE AND BRITAIN. THE RELATIONSHIP OF ITS FOUNDER 
TO THE LONG LINE OF MISSIONARIES, WHO FOR A CENTURY 
LABORED WITH SAVAGE TRIBES IN DANGER AND SUFFERING, 
WILL GIVE TO TliE COLLEGE A SACREDNESS IN ITS RELIGIOUS 
ASPECT. IT WILL NOT BE MERELY A MEMORIAL OF THE 
PAST, FOR IT FITTINGLY CROWNS THE RANGE OF HILLS FROM 
WHICH FLOW THE RIVERS THAT BIND TOGETHER OUR UNION 
WITH SILVER BANDS. IT OVERLOOKS VALLEYS ONCE TRAVELLED 
BY ARMIES IN WAR, WHICH ARE THE CHANNELS OF COMMERCE 
IN PEACE, AND WHICH WILL BE IN THE FUTURE WHAT THEY 
HAVE BEEN IN THE PAST, THE PATHWAYS OF GREAT EVENTS." 

HORATIO SEYMOUR. 



NEW YORK PUBL. LIBR, 
IN SXCHAN9V. 



V 



INTRODUCTORY. 

AT a special meeting of the trustees of Hamilton Col- 
lege, held on Thursday, August 25, 1892, Professor 
North made the report of the Nominating Committee for fill- 
ing the vacanc}^ created by the death of President Henry 
Darling. In accordance with the report of this committee, 
the Rev. Dr. Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, then pastor of 
the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, was unani- 
mously elected as the ninth President of Hamilton College. 
Dr. Horace B. Silliman, Professor North and Charles L. 
Stone Esq., were appointed a committee to inform Dr. 
Stryker of his election. 

At a subsequent meeting of the trustees, held on Thurs- 
day, September 15, 1892, Professor North presented Dr. 
Stryker's acceptance of his election to the presidency. On 
motion of Dr. Silliman it was unanimously 

Resolved, That the trustees of Hamilton College welcome 
most heartily and gratefully Dr. Stryker's acceptance of his 
election to the presidency, and pledge their hearty and 
earnest efforts to provide all needed funds for making his 
administration a brilliant chapter of progress and pros- 
perity in the history of Hamilton College. 

The Executive Committee were empowered to make ar- 
rangements for the inauguration of President Stryker on 
such day as should be found to be suitable and convenient. 

Dr. Stryker having resigned the pastorate of the Fourth 
Presbyterian Church in Chicago, entered upon the duties 
of the presidency November 10, 1892. 

The inauguration of President Stryker was solemnized 
on Tuesday afternoon, January 17, 1893, ii^ the Presby- 



4 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

terian Church in Clinton, before a very large audience of 
alumni, students, citizens and guests. The following was 
the 

ORDRR or EXERCISES, 



The Rev. Chancellor A. J. UPSON, D. D., LL.D., Presiding, 



I. Music, - - By Rath's Utica Orchestra. 

II. Reading of the Scriptures, 

By the Rev. Professor J. Arthur Jones. 

III. Opening Address, - By the Rev. Chancellor Upson, 

IV. Prayer, - By the Rev. George B. Spalding, D. D, 
V. Music, - - By Rath's Utica Orchestra. 

VI. Address of Induction, with Presentation of the College 
Charter and Seal, 

By the Hon. Theodore M. Pomeroy, A. M. 
VII. Inaugural Discourse, 

By the Rev. President M. Woolsey Stryker, D. D., LL.D. 
VIII. Hymn of Welcome, Led by Chorus of Undergradutes. 
IX. Addresses of Fellowship, 

By Trustee Charles A. Hawley, A. M., 
Rev. Professor Arthur S. Hoyt, A. M., and 
Mr. Charlls R. LaRue, of the Senior Class. 

X. Announcements, - - By President Stryker. 

XI. College Song, - By Undergraduates of the College. 

XII. Ken's Doxology, in Long Metre. 

XIIL The Benediction, - By President Stryker. 

XIV. Music, - - By Rath's Utica Orchestra, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 



HYA\N or WELCOA\E. 



Tune — Ward. 



With grace to choose the Bible's creed, 
And follow it in word and deed, 
.Straight on thro good report and ill, 
God bless our Mother on the Hill. 

II. 

To be a shield when armies fail, 
A beacon light when storms assail, 
Thro days of darkness hoping still, 
God help our Mother on the Hill. 

III. 

With sons devout, in battle brave 
To serve the Church, our land to save, 
With ranks that wait their Leader's will, 
God bless our Mother on the Hill. 

IV. 

Then welcome friends with helping hands. 
And welcome lore from distant lands ; 
Thrice welcome Leader, toil and drill. 
With Blessed Mother on the Hill. 



O HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

GUESTS or THE OCCASION. 

THE following is an attempted list of alumni and friends 
of the college whose presence added greatly to the inter- 
est of the occasion: Dr. M. M. Bagg, '36, Yale, Utica; Prof. 
Edward North, '41, College Hill ; Hon. Theodore M. 
Pomeroy, '42, Auburn ; Rev. Chancellor A. J. Upson, '43^ 
Glens Falls ; Rev. Dr. David A. Holbrook, '44, Sing Sing • 
Arnon G. Williams, '45, Westmoreland ; Publius V. 
Rogers, '46, Utica ; Dr. Horace B. Silliman, '47, Un. , 
Cohoes ; Benjamin B. Snow, '50, Auburn ; Rev. Dr. T, 
B. Hudson, '51, Clinton; Hon. Abram B. Weaver, '51,. 
Deerfield ; Charles C. Kingsley, '52, Utica; Hon. Millton 
H. Merwin, '52, Utica; Rev. E. P. Powell, '53, College 
Hill; Rev. Dwight Scovel, '54, Clinton ; WilKam M. 
White, '54, Utica; Seymour Scott, '55, Oneonta ; Rev. 
Dr. Oren Root, '56, College Hill ; Rev. Dr. George B. 
Spalding, '56, Union, Vt., Syracuse ; Dr. A. N. Brock- 
way, '57, New York ; Thomas D. Catlin, '57, Ottawa, 111.; 
Rev. Albert R. Warner, Norwich ; Charles A. Hawley, 
'59, Seneca Falls ; Rev. Samuel Miller, '60, Deansville ; 
Rev. S. D. Westfall, '60, Redwood Falls, Minn. ; John N. 
Beach, '61, New York City; Horace P. Bigelow, '61, 
Waterville ; Aaron M. Woodhull, '61, St. Louis, Mo.; 
Rev. Henry M. Dodd, '63, Augusta ; Charles M. Everett, 
'63, Clinton ; Hon. Elihu Root, '64, New York City ; Rev- 
Dana W. Bigelow, '65, Utica ; Rev. Dr. Luther A. Os- 
trander, '65, Lyons ; Rev. Prof. A. G. Hopkins, '66, Clin- 
ton ; Rev. Dr. Wallace B. Lucas, '66, Meridian ; Gen. 
Charles H. Smyth, Clinton ; Gen. Charles W. Darling,, 
Utica ; Rev. Dr. Charles E. Babcock, '6'] , Vernon ; 
Charles G. Egert, '68, Ogdensburgh ; Seabury S. Gould, 
'68, Seneca Falls ; Hon. John D. Henderson, '6'^, Herki- 
mer ; Daniel Finn, '6^,, Middletown ; Rev. J. Wilford 
Jacks, '68, Romulus ; Charles H. Sedgwick, '6Z, Syracuse ; 
Rev. Dr. Lewis R. Foote, '69, Brooklyn ; Charles H, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 7 

Searle, '69, Utica ; Thomas A. Abbott, '70, St. Paul, Minn. ; 
Rev. Charles E. Allison, '70* Yonkers ; Frederick H. 
Gouge, '70* Utica ; George C. Horton, '70, Utica ; Rev. 
Mr. Robert L. Bachman, '71, Utica; Benjamin Rhodes, 
'71, Niagara Falls; Charles L. Stone, 'yi, Syracuse ; Rev. 
Dr. V/iUiam R. Terrett, '71, Will., Clinton; Prof. Asa G. 
Benedict, '72, Chnton ; Prof. H. C. G. Brandt, '72, Col- 
lege Hill ; Rev. Prof. Arthur S. Hoyt, '72, Auburn ; Prof. 
Brainard G. Smith, '72, Ithaca ; Charles H. Stanton, '72, 
Norwich ; Rev. Cornelius S. Storritts, '72, Rondout ; Rev. 
Dr. M. Woolsey Stryker, '72, College Hill ; Prof. Arthur 
M. Wright, '72, Waterville ; Hon. R. C. Briggs, '73, Rome; 
Rev. Prof. J. Arthur Jones, '73» Hamilton ; Edward D. 
Mathews, '73, Utica; John W. O'Brien, '73' Auburn; 
Rev. Eben B. Cobb, '75, Elizabeth, N. J.; Rev. William 
H. Allbright, ''/6, Dorchester, Mass. ; Sidney W. Petrie, 
'^6, Buffalo; Prof. George Griffith, 'jy, Utica; Hon. James 
S. Sherman, 'y^, Utica; Rev. Theodore H. Allen, '79^ 
Mendota, 111.; George E. Dunham, '79, Utica; Dr. F. H. 
Peck, '79> Clinton; William M. Griffith, '80, Utica; Rev. 
Silas E. Persons, '81, Cazenovia; Prof. Clinton Scollard, 
'81, Clinton; Fred M. Calder, '82, Utica; F. DeWolf 
Smyth, '82, Clinton; Rev. George K. Eraser, '83, Oneida 
Castle; Rev. John C. Mead, '83, Clyde; JohnD. Gary, '84, 
Richfield Springs; Prof. Edward Fitch, '^6, College Hill; 
John R. Myers, 'Sy, New York; Rev. Charles H. Walker, 
'^y, Chittenango; Charles B. Rogers, '87, Utica; Frank B. 
McLean, '88, So. Columbia; Rev. Walter Mitchell, '88, 
Verona; Warren D. More, '88, Auburn Theological Semi- 
nary; Albert R. Kessinger, '88, Rome; William M. Collier, 
'87, Auburn; Rev. Prof. Wilham H. Squires, '88, College 
Hill; Prof. Melvin U. Dodge, '90, College Hill; Joseph D. 
Ibbotson, Jr., Union Seminary, New York; Prof. Charles 
H. Smyth, Jr., Ph. D., '88 Cohimb., Clinton; Alfred A. 
Moore, '90, College Hill; Prof. Delos DeWolf Smyth, '90, 
Clinton; Thomas L. Coventry, '91, Utica; George H. 
Feltus, '91, Auburn Theological Seminary; James W. 
Fowler, '91, Watkins; Thomas E. Hayden, '91, Clinton.; 



8 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

Charles A. Miller, '91, Clinton; Henry P. Osborne, '91, 
Clinton; D. Barton Case, '92, Verona; Walter S. Couper, 
'92, College Hill; Harvey H. Fay, '92, Potsdam; Orville 
T. Fletcher, '92, Union Theological Seminary; Charles T. 
Ives, '92, Clinton; John P. Martin, '92, Watertown; Wil- 
liam P. Shepard, '92, College Hill; George F. Wood, 
'92, Union Theological Seminary; Hon. Thomas E. Kin- 
ney, Utica; Dr. Louis A. Tourtellot, Utica; Robert S. 
Williams, Utica; Rev. Dr. James S. Riggs, '74, Prin., 
Auburn; Rev. C. S. Richardson, Hob., Little Falls; Rev. 
Horace H. Allen, '57, Roch., Holland Patent; Rev. A. G. 
Markham, Oriskany Falls; Rev. W. Courtland Robinson, 
Prin., Clinton; Thomas H. Stryker, Hob. '68, Rome; Rev. 
Israel N. Terry, Amh. '71, New Hartford; Prof. George C. 
Sawyer, '55, Harv., Utica; John E. Myer, '6"], Will., Cana- 
stota; William Schachtel, Utica; Rev. W. B. Randolph, 
Clinton; Rev. Clarence H. Beebe, Port Byron; Dr. H. R. 
Hughes, Clinton; William S. Taylor, Utica; Rev. P. D. 
Cowan, Canastota; Dr. Conway A. Frost, Clinton; Rev. 
George Hardy, Sauquoit; Rev. J. S. Fitschen, jr., Water- 
ville; William W. Wotherspoon, New York; Henry M. Haw- 
ley, Utica; Thomas E. McEntee, Clarks Mills; J. J.Hanchett, 
Deansville; A. C. Miller, Oneida, Knox Co., Ill; Henry H. 
Miller, Clinton; Seth K. Blair, Clinton; T. J. Bannigan, 
Utica; J. J. Bassett, Leyden; T. T. Thompson, Clinton; 
G. MacKissam, New York; C. L. Florsheim, Shreveport, 
La.; Howard Cornell, East Palmyra; Consider G. Mitchell, 
Utica. 

From the class of '93: 

Harry C. Allen, Springwater ; James A. Ayres, Catskill ; 
Carroll B. Bacon, Leyden ; Joseph R. Baker, New Hart- 
ford ; John J. Bradley, Watertown ; Thomas C. Brockway, 
Clinton ; Matthew G. Buckner, Nashville, Tenn. ; Daniel 
W. Burke, Oxford ; Starr Cadwallader, Utica ; John G. 
Campbell, Clinton ; William F. Canough, Sandy Creek ; 
George R. Douglass, Raymondville ; Allan F. Emery, 
Mexico ; Thomas B. Finch, Cortland ; Charles R. La Rue, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 9 

Little Falls ; Nathaniel McGiffin, Clinton ; Frank C. 
McMaster, Cherry Valley ; William E. Mott, Clinton ; 
George N. Popoff, Bansko, Macedonia ; George H. Post, 
Clinton ; Frederick H. Ralsten, Lowville ; Luther N. 
Steele, East Bloomfield ; Earle E. Woolworth, Clinton ; 
Alexander Wouters Clinton. 

From the class of '94: 

Edwin C. Baker, New Hartford; John N. Beach, Jr., 
Brooklyn ; Theodore F. Collier, Clinton ; Warren H. 
Everett, Penn. ; Lewis N. Foote, Brooklyn ; Cornelius J. 
Gibson, Clinton ; Fraud C. Goulding, Fredonia ; Warren 
P. Hunt, Knoxboro ; Charles E. Keck, College Hill ; David 
H. McMaster, Cherry Valley ; Thomas J. Mangon, Bing- 
hamton ; Willis N. Mills, Chicago, 111. ; James A. Minor, 
Deposit ; Daniel H. H. Naylor, Pulaski ; David H. New- 
land, Camden ; Leroy F. Ostrander, Lyons ; Arthur M. 
Payne, Croton ; David L. Roberts, Port Leyden ; Oren 
Root, Jr., College Hill; James B. Sanford, Penn Yan ; 
Nicholas Schmeckenbecher, Yonkers ; Aaron C. Stuart, 
South Howard ; Ralph W. Vincent, Verona ; John J. 
Ward, College Hill ; George A. Watrous, Binghamton. 

From the class of '95 : 

William A. Aiken, Auburn ; Burton M. Balch, Utica ; 
Herbert R. Bates, Auburn ; Ely Buell, Rochester ; Her- 
bert R. Burgess, Auburn ; Frank A. Burrows, Boonville ; 
Thomas G. Bush, Pompey ; Wallace C. Butler, Jr., St. 
Louis, Mo. ; James W. Carmalt, Clinton ; William W. 
Chambers, Utica; George Clark, jr. , Ensenora ; Frederick 
J. DeLaFleur, Adams ; Roy B. Dudley, Augusta ; Sehvyn 
C. Edgar, jr., St. Louis, Mo.; John G. Everett, Clinton ; 
Orlando E. Ferry, Clinton ; James H. Foster, Verona ; 
Joseph I. France, Canandaigua ; George H. Geer, Seneca 
Falls ; Charles A. Green, Dallas, Texas ; Isaac J. Green- 
wood, jr., New York ; Fred E. Kessinger, Rome; Willard 
G. Loomis, Oxford; Jay H. MacConnell, Cranford, N. J.; 
Friend H. Miller, Bath; Horace S. Owen, Clinton; Samuel 



10 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

G. Palmer, PennYan; William E. Pettit, Wilson; Anthony 
N. Petersen, Utica ; Arthur D. Scovel, Clinton; John B. 
Seymour, New Berne, N. C. ; George E. Stone, Mexico; 
Benjamin H. Thorp, Gilbertsville; Clarence S. Wright, 
Otego. 

From the Class of '96: 

Alexander Ahson Jr., Seattle, Wash.; Joseph B. Ast- 
wood. West Warwick, Bermuda; Plorace G. Atwater, 
Norfolk; Edward S. Babcock, Camden ; Carl A. Baptist, 
Fredonia; Hiram D. Bacon, Pultney; George A. Bates, 
Phelps; Hoffman T. Baumgarten, Hornellsville; Isaac L. 
Best, Broadalbin; Horace H. Bogue, Avon; Frank T. 
Budd, Equinunk, Pa.; Henry J. Cookinham Jr., Utica; 
George W. Elkins, Mexico; Thomas U. Chesebrough, 
Syracuse; Zelotus W. Commerford, Boonyille; Burr G. 
Eells, Walton; Wallace H. Emery, Mexico; John A. Fer- 
guson, Canandaigua; William E. Hewitt, Syracuse; Frank 
W. Holmes, Dugway; Frank P. Knowlton, Holland Patent; 
Louis K. R. Laird, Auburn; George L. Lerch, , Geneva; 
Edward McMallery, Franklin; William. F. Moore, Saratoga 
Springs; Alexander J. Ostrander, Lyons; Richard Owen, 
Utica; Charles W. Rice, Hall's Corners; Jacob S. Sies- 
beck, Mexico; Byron B. Taggart, Watertovv^n; Seneca C- 
Taylor, St. Louis, Mo; Seth N. Thomas, Moravia; Neile 
F. Towneer, Washington, D. C. ; Frank E. Van Wie, 
Howard; Harry B. Ward, Buffalo; Frederick P. Warfield, 
Canandaigua; Arthur Warner, Richmondville; Gardner 
W. Wood, Maine. 

The following additional guests were registered for the 
evening banquet in Utica: 

Talcott H. Camp, Trustee, Watertown ; Arnon G. 
Williams, '45, Westmoreland ; John M. Butler, '48, Utica;, 
Charles C. Kellogg, '49, Utica; Rev. Dr. C. T. Olmsted, 
Utica; Hon. Charles E. Fitch, Rochester; Milton H. 
Northrup, '60, Syracuse; Hon. Myron A. McKee, '62, Rich- 
field Springs; Hon. Willard A. Cobb, '64, Lockport; Haines 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. II 

D. Cunningham, '66, Albany; John H. Cunningham, '66, 
Utica; Judge Pardon C. Williams, Watertown; Prof. 
William L. Downing, '69, Utica; Rev. Charles H. VanWie, 
'74, Melrose; Emmett J. Ball, '/S. Utica; Dr. G. Alder 
Blumer, Utica; Dr. F. F. Laird, '77» Utica; Hon. James S. 
Sherman, 'yS, Utica; Theodore L. Cross, '81, Utica; 
Edmund J. Wager, '85, Utica; C. C. Benedict, Fulton; Otto 
A. Meyer, Utica; Dr. Smith Baker, Utica; C. S. Symonds, 
Utica. 



ANNOUNCEMENTS BY PRESIDENT STRYKER. 

After the addresses. President Stryker conferred the fol- 
lowing degrees, in accordance with a vote of the Trustees, 
at a meeting held just before the inauguration exercises: 

. A. B. EX GRATIA. 

William Augustus Hubbard, jr., class of 1872, Rochester. 

Frank S. Weigley, Class of 1875, Chicago, 111. 

Dr. Sewell Aldrich Brooks, Class of 1884, Strykersville. 

A. M. IN COURSE. 

Rev. Frederick Perkins, Class of 1889, Ulster, Pa. 

A. M. HONORARY. 

Henry William King,. Chicago, 111. 
John Newton Beach, Brooklyn. 

D. D. HONORARY. 

Rev. Professor Arthur Stephen Hoyt, Class of 1872^ 
Auburn Theological Seminary. 

L. H. D. HONORARY. 

Rev. Dr. Kinsley Twining, Morristown, N. J. 

LL. D. HONORARY. 

Hon. Theodore Medad Pomeroy, Class of 1842, Auburn. 

President Stryker further announced : 

I. That Gen. Charles H. Smyth, of Clinton, had b^en 
elected to a seat in the Board of Trustees. 



12 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

II. That a graduate of the college, living in New York 
city, had made a gift of $i,ooo for rebuilding the chapel 
spire. 

III. That Frank S. Weigley, of Chicago, had given 
$i,ooo for the care and improvement of the college campus. 

IV. That the follovv^ing resolutions had been adopted 
Jby the Trustees : 

"In view of the conclusion of the services of Prof. 
Edward North, L. H. D. , as acting President of Hamilton 
College for the period from April 21, 1891, to Novenber, 
1892, the trustees would record their respectful gratitude 
for these services and their appreciation of that modesty, 
courtesy and ardor, which in this as in all other relations 
have endeared Prof. North to his associates and indebted 
to him both this corporation and his ever widening circle 
of friends. 

''And further remembering that the coming commence- 
ment will mark the complete 50th year of Dr. North's 
service in the faculty and desiring to recognize so excep- 
tional a term of faithful and fruitful toil, we do hereby ap- 
point Messrs. Pomeroy, Joseph R. Hawley, Cochran, 
Brockway and Stone, to be a committee of five to deter- 
mine in what most suitable way the friends of Dr. North 
and of Hamilton College should punctuate and memorize 
this jubilee. We request this committee to consider 
whether it might not be a suitable and timely memorial of 
this period to found an Edward North chair of Greek, to 
yield an income of $2, 500 annually. But whatever may be 
the conclusion of this committee, we request them to re- 
port not only an end, but also ways and means, and to re- 
port at the next regular meeting of this board. " 

V. The trustees having heard the statement from Prof. 
Clinton Scollard, expressing his preference for the single de- 
partment of English Literature, and the further generous con- 
sent of Mr. Charles C. Kingsley that, upon certain condi- 
tions, the title of the chair of rhetoric and elocution may be 
changed to bear the name of Dr. Upson, further 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 13- 

Resolved, I. That Prof. Clinton Scollard be and hereby is 
appointed Professor of Enghsh Literature at the salary 
which he is now receiving. 

2. That we do hereby erect the Upson Chair of 
Rhetoric and Oratory, defining its full endowment to be 
$50,000. 

3. That as a beginning toward this sum we do hereby 
in lieu of the $18,000 once paid in toward the Kingsley 
professorship instruct our treasurer to set apart to the 
Upson chair $1 5,000 from the Fayerweather funds. 

4. That we gratefully recognize the kindness of those 
who by their explicit guarantees enable us at once to call 
an occupant to the said Upson chair. 

5. That we authorize the President to present to all 
proper persons the claims of the Upson chair to secure 
subscriptions for the same. 

6. That we do hereby call Prof. Brainard G. Smith, 
now professor in Cornell University, to become the Pro- 
fessor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Hamilton College, his 
work to begin September i, 1893, and his salary to be 
$2, 500 per year. 

There were present at the above named meeting of the 
Trustees, Messrs. Kingsley, Rogers, Mollison, North, C. 
Hawley, Hudson, Brockway, Pomeroy, Stone, Catlin, 
Dunham, Tompkins, White, Stryker. 

Having been held by storm-bound trains, there arrived 
later and in time for the public exercises. Trustees Root, 
Silliman and Spalding. Mr. Charles H. Smyth being present 
took his new seat with the Trustees. 



ADDRESS 

OF THE REV. ANSON J. UPSON, D. D. , LL. D. , CHANCELLOR OF 
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 

GRADUATES and friends of Hamilton College. We are 
happy, thrice happy, to greet each other and all 
assembled here on this auspicious occasion. Many of us 
have struggled thro the snows of winter to reach this valley 
of peace. Yet our hearts are warm with undiminished and 
increasing affection for our dear ' ' mother on the hill. " God 
bless her ! 

We have come to this hallowed spot to remember ; we 
have come to see again in our mind's eye ' ' old familiar 
faces " no longer on earth. We have come to remember 
the revered teachers and dear college friends whom we 
shall love forever in the endless life. 

We have come hither also with undiminished and in- 
creasing loyalty, to express as best we may our confidence 
in these living teachers, many of whom have given the best 
years of their life to perhaps the best work in the world. 
We have come hither to congratulate sincerely every one 
of these faithful instructors, believing that the work of in- 
struction and training was never done better than now. 

As graduates and friends of the college, knowing somewhat 
the condition of things, we have come hither also to pre- 
sent our most respectful and grateful salutations to our Board 
of Trust — a board sometimes misunderstood, thoughtlessly, 
unreasonably criticised. Why ? Because, forsooth, it can- 
not and therefore does not create something out of nothing, 
and rear somehow upon yonder hill the palace of Aladdin, 
without Aladdin's lamp or ring to rub. We indulge in 
no such unreasonable fault-finding. We ask permission to 
assure these honored gentlemen of our respect and confi- 
dence, and to thank them heartily for their faithful, self- 
sacrificing, long-suffering service. And our gratitude shall, 
if possible, find expression in something more substantial 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. I 5 

than words only. Not many of our graduates are over- 
burdened with gold, yet many of us shake hands every 
week with some millionaire who does not know what to 
do with his money. Some one of us certainly shakes hands 
each week with some rich man who dreads to be forgotten 
when he is dead and is willing to secure remembrance by 
his benefactions. From past experience, our faithful Board 
of Trust has a right to believe that the unexpected will 
happen. Let them thank God and take courage. 

And, my dear brethren of the alumni, we greet each 
other to-day. It is our "thanksgiving." Ours is one of 
the smaller colleges, but in the simple and impressive words 
of Daniel Webster, in his memorable plea before the 
Supreme Court of the United States, for his own Dart- 
mouth, ' ' Ours is a small college, but there are those who 
love her. " We are a small family. Perhaps we are all the 
more proud of the family because it is so small. Certainly 
we do not believe that size is the measure of power. Every 
short man among us is ready to affirm that Julius Caesar 
and Napoleon, ' ' the little corporal, " exemplify the contrary. 
Even the higher critics do not yet deny that St. Paul was 
low in stature, very diminutive. We are but a little army. 
Living and dead we number less than three thousand souls. 
Not more than two thousand could march in the ranks to- 
day. But we have somewhere heard — did we hear it in 
college .'' did our Greek professor tell us about the pass of 
Thermopylae and the three hundred ? The noble six hun- 
dred will be remembered when the great armies of the 
Crimea are forgotten. At the opening of our civil war, in 
the startling defeat at Bull Run, our huge army was scat- 
tered ; the big mob of spectators ran away. But one little 
'compan)^ held its own, and held together and marched in 
good order straight back to Washington. That little com- 
pany was led by, captain, major, general, governor, United 
States senator and, best of all to-day, loyal alumnus, Joseph 
Roswell Hawley ! Not one of that great, defeated, disin- 
tegrated army at Bull Run cares to have his name remem- 



1 6 HAMILTON COLLEGE 

bered ; but the example of obedience to orders by that Httle 
company at the beginning of the long drawn conflict taught 
an impressive lesson of self-control, and will be remembered 
in our history forever. 

The graduates of Hamilton College can easily be counted. 
Some of us may have feared the extinction of the family. 
But as we look into these bright young faces, and as we 
begin to count these undergraduates, these recruits, these 
cadets, I feel assured that the collegiate succession is not 
likely to fail. Many second editions are here ; many third 
editions, revised and corrected. To every one of these 
undergraduates it will be a life long incentive to know that 
he is a graduate of a college whose alumni are not ashamed, 
but are proud of her and of each other. Let us be en- 
thusiastic together, and let us not be ashamed of our en- 
thusiasm. We do take pride, as we rightly may, in our 
scholars, oriental and philosophical and linguistic and sci- 
entific ; in our very large number of teachers, theological 
and classical and educational, repeating successfully the 
lessons they have learned on yonder hill. Notwithstand- 
ing Mr. Carnegie's tirade against collegiate education for a 
business man, our more than one hundred and forty-eight 
merchants, and bankers, and manufacturers, and agricultur- 
ists are successfully contradicting every day his thoughtless 
and fallacious assertions. We take unselfish pride in our 
devoted physicians, saving the lives of the suffering ; in 
our lawyers and judges, righting the wrongs of the op- 
pressed and cheated in a score of States and cities. We glory 
in our one hundred editors, wielding with vitality and vigor, 
and if need be with vengeance, the pens they practiced with 
in college. We remember to-day with profound respect 
the great number — one-fourth of our graduates, serving 
their Master, not only in metropolitan pulpits and profes- 
sorial chairs, but in solitary mountain glens, in the cabins 
of the miner, and far out on the plains in the taper-lit hut 
of the lonely settler ; and we remember with enthusiasm 
those heroes of the higher life, laboring alone in a solitude, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. l/ 

loneliest of Earth, alone among the millions who speak 
another language and bear a foreign name. These, our 
college brothers, need not, like the Cardinals of the Roman 
Catholic Church, robe themselves in red in order thus to 
symbolize their wilhngness to shed their blood for their 
Lord. 

And specially, with the deepest reverential affection do 
we recall at this hour that roll of honor which ought to be 
hung, if it be not already, in our Memorial Hall, by the 
side of our list of missionaries. On that roll should be in- 
scribed, in letters of gold, the names of the one hundred 
and seventy-six graduates and undergraduates who enlisted 
in the war for the Union — many of them our heroic dead 
who died for us upon the field of honor. 

These, all these and many more, bear witness that the 
education given in this college for the past eighty years 
has been of real value, both theoretical and practical. 
All who have received it, not without exception, but in a 
very large proportion, have accomplished, in the vocation 
into which God has called them, their own best work in 
the world. 

The good education here given has been largely the ef- 
fect of the intimate personal intercourse between the 
teachers and the taught. Our graduates are remarkable 
for self-reliance and self-control. They have received a 
manly education. Very few of our alumni fear to face an 
audience. They also adapt themselves easily and readily 
to changing circumstances. In many respects our educa- 
tional methods have been remarkably original. You will 
pardon me, of one your ancient professors, for saying that 
of late I have been amused — I could not help it — when I 
noticed that educational methods long in familiar use 
among us, when adopted just now elsewhere have been an- 
nounced, forsooth, as altogether new and unheard of ! 

Now, shall all this cease ? Shall this smaller college, and 
others with it, go out of existence, absorbed in great uni- 
versities ? Let a great university in a large commonwealth 

B 



I 8 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

monopolize the higher education and you will con- 
centrate education at the expense of its diffusion. This 
would be a "public calamity" indeed, a "public calamity" 
compared with which the ever-to-be-building and never- 
to-be-finished Capitol at Albany would be a public bene- 
faction, an incalculable benefit. Destroy the nesting places 
and you'll have no birds. In the 1 3th century the Uni- 
versity of Salamanca was the only university in Spain — 
crowded to repletion with ten thousand students — yet 
never were the Spanish people so ignorant and supersti- 
tious. In my judgment, we are too often deceived and in- 
jured by making numbers the criterion of merit. But for 
our college we have no fear. Our trustees, to-day, by one 
of the most honored of their number will here and now 
give you a visible pledge that they will continue to per- 
petuate and confirm as well as reform and improve. In 
the spirit of our omniscent all-wise Lord they will ' ' not 
destroy but fulfill. " They are about to inaugurate a presi- 
dent of this college for the first time in history, who is not 
a graduate of Yale, nor of Dublin, nor of Dartmouth, nor 
of Amherst, but of Hamilton ! We make no comparisons. 
We appreciate and would not depreciate predecessors. 
And without anticipating improperly the address of induc- 
tion, I may be permitted, as one of the older alumni and 
one of his teachers, to assure our new President that we 
have faith in him ! He will let us tell him what is not 
news to most of us, that he has abundant energy, enthu- 
siasm, breadth of mind and breadth of purpose, ' ' mental 
alacrity and bodily vigor," imagination, culture, a youth- 
ful spirit, friendly feeling, kindly temper, executive force, 
and that by his unselfishness, his self-sacrificing devotion 
he has already aroused an enthusiasm which proves that 
he is just the man for our leader. As graduates of the col- 
lege, " for better for worse, for richer for poorer," we shall 
stand together, and stand by him. And we shall pray for 
him ! The last stanza of the beautiful hymn of Prof. North 
gains once more a new and assured significance. I remem- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 1 9 

ber the sainted mother of our new President, as I repeat 
the words : 

" Allies unseen thy steps attend, 

And saints redeemed thy service share; 

Upward from many a Christian friend 
Ascends for thee the strength of prayer." 

And now the address of induction is to be delivered by a 
gentleman of whom I have a wholesome fear ! You will 
not wonder that I fear him when I tell you that when I 
was an undergraduate student in an under-class in this col- 
lege, he was a dignified senior ! I remember his senior 
oration in the college chapeL I thought it then one of the 
most eloquent addresses to which I had ever listened. I 
have not changed my opinion. And the Congress has en- 
dorsed the collegiate estimate of his abilities, for, in the 
40th Congress, the House of Representatives made him its 
speaker. By a not impossible conjunction of circum- 
stances, he might have been President of the United 
States, for he was third in the line of succession. 

I need not introduce the Hon. Theodore M. Pomeroy, of 
the Class of 1842, 



^ae<?3«;'<a.t_iisitt-^«art(sussBs»M!tK 



ADDRESS 

OF THEODORE M. POMEROY, LL. D., 

WE have entered upon the centennial year of the 
Hamilton Oneida Academy, the blossom whose 
fruitage was Hamilton College, alma mater of the 
many alumni gathered here in love for her, and in grati- 
tude for this occasion. 

The limited expectations of the devoted missionary, 
Samuel Kirkland, in ' ' laying the foundation of and sup- 
porting an academy contiguous to the Oneida Nation, for 
the mutual benefit of the early settlements of the country 
and of the various tribes of confederate Indians" were com- 
mensurate with his day, but scarcely for even the few re- 
maining years of his life. The graves of Skenandoa and 
Kirkland mark the opening of a century, in the very begin- 
ning of which the great confederacy of the Iroquois was to 
be exterminated, and the frontier settlements to be pressed 
on far westward from New York. Mr. Kirkland's purpose 
of Christian education was not narrowed to frontiers nor 
Indians, and when in 1812, the academy was incorporated 
by the Regents of the University as Hamilton College, the 
educational idea of the founder was given a scope adapted 
to the widest opportunities of the future. The new century 
was before it, and standing now near the close of that 
century we claim that the college has never failed in the 
faithful discharge of its duties ; the central thought of 
Christian education has never departed from it, and the 
best expectations of Kirkland and Hamilton have been 
more than realized in the impress of her three thousand 
alumni upon the generations in which they have lived and 
are living. There is, however, no occasion now to speak of 
college history. That has been frequently rehearsed from 
this platform by abler tongues than mine. Its histor}^ and 
its traditions are the pride of this community and not an 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 21 

alumnus has won a victory on any field of worldly activity, 
the applause of whose success has not been echoed around 
these walls from College Hill. 

The past is more than creditable, the present is all 
serene, but I utter no discordant voice amid these pleasant 
surroundings when I say that it is not enough to have lived 
creditably through these eighty years. The century de- 
mands a fearful reckoning from men and institutions, both 
of opportunities offered and of duties discharged in the un- 
exampled development of this new empire of the West. 
What further magnificence in national growth, what further 
wonderful revelations in science, what marvelous disclosures 
of invention the future may have in store we may not know, 
but this nation, the unparalled growth of a hundred years, 
presents a development so rapid as almost to eliminate our 
present, from the beginning of our college history, in all 
conditions of material, social, scientific and even religious 
life. We must consider the present in the light of this 
great advancement. The question to-day presented to the 
alumni and the community at large and to which I wish I 
had the opportunity to ask an honest answer from the 
former ' ' western frontier settlements of the State of New 
York," now swollen to populous counties and wealthy cities, 
is whether the community and the alumni, as the pressure 
of succeeding decades have come upon the college, have 
supplemented its earlier endowments and presented to it 
•such other additional opportunities as to meet the demands 
upon it for an expansive and greater usefulness fairly rep- 
resentative of its time. I do not propose to answer this 
question. I will simply state a few conditions which have 
been and are restrictive of the usefulness of the college, 
leaving each to answer for himself to what extent they are 
now necessarily so. 

1st. The rural location of the college, aside from any 
great line of transportation and population, however ap- 
propriate for educational purposes, per se, was not calcu- 
lated to stimulate endowments from the growing cities, the 



22 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

centers of wealth of the State, each emulous of the other 
and desirous not only to ornament its locality with a seat 
of higher learning, but naturally desirous to give its advan- 
tages to its youth at lowest cost. 

2d. The tendency to centralization which has mani- 
fested itself in educational as in all forms of American life 
with the added annihilation of distance thro the rapidity 
and ease of modern travel has drawn away to older and 
larger centers of education great numbers who under former 
conditions would have been proud of the advantages of 
more local institutions. 

3d. Since the charter of Hamilton College was granted, 
Colgate University, Rochester University, Hobart College 
and the Syracuse University have been permanently es- 
tablished in Central and Western New York, all well 
equipped and some of them magnificently endowed thro the 
influence in other denominations of those motives of re- 
ligious interests which it was expected would be equally 
operative here, and if I may use the term, all successfully 
competing with us in the great work of Christian education. 
On other lines, commencing with the practical donation of 
the entire and large fortune of Ezra Cornell, supplemented 
by millions given by the State in land grants, and further 
aided by gifts from Andrew D. White, Henry W. Sage and 
others, such as only during the past few decades have ever 
emanated from the stewardship of wealth, Cornell Uni- 
versity has been planted upon the hills of Ithaca, a univer- 
sity worthy of the name and in its rapid development in 
full pace with the century. 

This great increase of educational facilities within thenar-^ 
row limits of Central and Western New York must necessarily 
have been and continue to be a great limitation to the 
growth of Hamilton College. 

4th. Rev. Samuel Kirkland was a missionary in con- 
nection with the Presbyterian Church, then most active in 
the evangelization of the new settlements of Central and 
Western New York. While no sectarian impress was 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 23 

placed upon the old academy its denominational character 
was expected to be and was Presbyterian. The endow- 
ment of the chair of the president of this college, the gift 
of those eminent Christian gentlemen, Benjamin S. V/al- 
cott and William D. Walcott, nailed the presidency to the 
church by the condition that the president of the college 
should be the incumbent of the professorship established 
by such endowment and that he ' ' should be a clergyman 
and a member of that branch of the Presbyterian Church 
with which the Synod of Utica is at present connected and 
within the bound of which Synod Hamilton College is lo- 
cated." Benjamin S. and William D. Walcott thro their 
long and honored lives were recognized for business 
ability and sound judgment as well as for devoted Christian 
character. They loved their church and nearly as much 
they loved this college. Their gift with the proviso named 
came from the combination of that love and that business 
sagacity. Their sound judgment persuaded them to be- 
lieve that wholly aside from any organic union, denomina- 
tional sympathy and benevolence must be, in the case of 
Hamilton College if it is to attain its highest expectations, 
a strong factor in its expansion, and that the denomination 
under whose inspiration it was born was the proper one 
with which it should continue to be affiliated, and the only 
one from which it could expect moral denominational sup- 
port. That the expected result has not followed is no im- 
peachment of the wisdom of the proviso of the Walcott 
endowment. The college has at least kept its bond with 
the church and has been one of the principal feeders of its 
theological seminaries, and in all other respects has been 
true to its opportunities. 

Now if in this brief recapitulation of the limitations under 
which Hamilton College has met the demands of the age 
upon it, any one is inclined to fold his hands in discourage- 
ment, and sit down in despondency, he is not a good alum- 
nus, nor a good Presbyterian, nor a good friend of the col- 
lege. Any disadvantages arising from locality apply equally 



24 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

well to Princeton and Cornell ; and the denominational 
zeal which has made the one, and the princely endow- 
ments which have created the other, would have been equally 
operative here. The spirit here could vitalize as large a 
body, with equal results. For the foundation of the other 
colleges I have named we are grateful and God grant that 
the educational advantages of the State may never be less, 
wherever we may stand in the field of competition. 

Standing here the son of a reverend father whose life 
was devoted to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, 
with all my personal attachments to that branch of the 
church militant on Earth, I do not believe the existing bond 
of union, moral and in no sense organic, between this college 
and that church has exhausted its usefulness, nor that it is 
to remain as now a limitation. The united wisdom of two 
generations of godly Walcotts did not err. That alliance 
is yet to be one of strength and expansion to both. 

But in dwelling upon these limitations, I have overlooked 
the fact that a very necessary limitation was placed upon 
the time to be occupied by me on this occasion. I cannot 
close without saying, that however it may be with us, the 
college can render its account to the century with credit 
and with honest pride. It is accountable only for the op- 
portunities committed to it. Thro these eighty years, 
at all times restricted from the fuller usefulness to which it 
was adapted, by want of commensurate endowment, it has 
maintained a healthy and a vigorous existence and growth 
a part of the general growth of the community. Wherever 
by virtue of its own high character and of its necessity 
it may have ranked in point of quantity, its quality has ever 
won universal respect. More than all, it has held true to 
its foundation. The perfect college has been its ideal and 
none other has approached nearer to its accomplishment. 
It has made no frantic appeals to popular support through 
efforts to broaden itself or to flatten itself into a university. 
It has at all times recognized its limitations and confined 
its ambitions within them and it has attained a life which is 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 2$ 

self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. The physical equip- 
ment in grounds, buildings and other necessary appliances is 
substantial and perhaps for the immediate present adequate. 
The faculty is almost unique in its composition for instruction 
in a purely college course. Its scholarly senior, the professor 
of Greek and of Greek Literature, the loved companion of 
my college days, is qualified to have taught in the Athens 
of Pericles. His most worthy associate in instruction in 
the Latin language and Latin literature has no superior in 
his department. The gifted professor of Mathematics may 
be said to have been born into his professorship with a 
name a synonym of his calling. The chair of Law, His- 
tory, Civil Polity and Political Economy is more than 
graced by one who has already eclipsed any possible repu- 
tation as an instructor, by that of the most gifted pulpit 
orator of his day. Johns-Hopkins University was despoiled 
of one of its brightest scholars, that our chair of German 
and French languages and Philology might be worthily 
filled by its present occupant. The chair of Rhetoric and 
Elocution, Hamilton's special pride, which it was supposed 
could be only occupied but never again filled, after the 
long and phenomenally successful incumbency of another 
loved friend of college days, our presiding officer to-day, 
has never been without a worthy successor and is now 
filled with a fullness which must enkindle pride in his pre- 
decessors, by the already risen poet of his generation. 
The re-arranged chairs for instruction in Agriculture and 
General Chemistry, Biology, Natural History, Geology and 
Mineralogy, Metaphysics and Logic are fully up to the re- 
quirements of our time. And now as the fullest manifes- 
itation of self-confidence, self-reliance and self-assertion 
the Board of Trustees have called as president of the college, 
to be ' ' Walcott Professor of the Evidences of Christianity, 
of Moral Science and Natural Religion and Pastor of the 
College, " for the first time in its history an alumnus of its 
•own, the Rev. Melancthon Woolsey Stryker, D. D., LL. 
iD., of the class of 1872. It is the purpose to induct into 



26 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

this high office, one bred in the instruction of our college^, 
graced with its oratory, filled with its enthusiasm, imbued 
with love for all its highest interests, an honored type to- 
the world of the present of Hamilton. 

With feudal loyalty alike to the long line of honored 
presidents who have gone before, and to their young and 
vigorous successor of to-day, we may well shout ' ' The King 
is dead, long live the King. " This shout is the inspiration 
of the ever present forever pressing on upon the ever future. 
It implies not change, but continuance, growth, evolution — 
Kirkland and his germ of Christian Education living on, in 
and thro a grand procession of holy men, into the body and' 
the soul of him who in this presence will now carry into* 
the presidency, not learning only and large capacity for- 
administration, but the spirit and the functions of the 
higher office of a minister of the Gospel, to which he has- 
already consecrated his life. 

It would add inexpressible interest if of the illustrious: 
line of our college presidents, there might be one still living 
to add his benediction to this inauguration. In this, 
thought there arises before me the form of one, the ideal 
president of my college days, the embodiment of the high- 
est manly dignity, classical scholarship and Christian char- 
acter, before whom I bow with filial affection, Dr. Simeon 
North. My highest aspiration is that this ideal of m}^ 
youthful love and veneration may be embodied in the suc- 
cessor upon whom his mantle falls to day, and that he may 
equally impress himself upon the generation committed to 
his care and guidance. 

In conclusion — Dr. Stryker — the Board of Trustees of 
Hamilton College, acting thro me as its representative, now 
inducts you into the high office of its presidency. 

Acting in the name of the Board officially I commit to- 
you as custodian, the charter, the keys and the seal of this, 
institution ; the evidences in your possession of its corpo- 
rate existence, of the corporate powers committed to it, and- 
of your own authority. Speaking in their behalf, individ.- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 2/ 

ually, I assure you of the unanimity of their action in plac-' 
ing this great trust in your keeping, and of the fervent wish 
and prayer of each of them that your labors in this distin-' 
guished calhng may be blessed with a rich reward. 



In accepting from Dr. Pomeroy the charter, keys and 
seal, Dr. Stryker replied briefly, and in substance as follows : 

Receiving from your hands, dear Sir, these symbols of 
authority, they become to me still more the symbols of 
responsibility. 

It is with unfeigned humility that I venture upon this trust 
and all its varied tasks. 

This office must be conditioned for these immediate years 
upon the good will and tangible concrete support of our 
whole constituency. For that I appeal and in that I hope. 
But above all I would to-day acknowledge and entreat His 
favor of whom it is written — '*If any man lack wisdom 
let him ask of God." I take these tokens and with them- 
your own generous words, and I thank you. 



Inaugural Address of President Stryker. 

To you. Sir, Chayicellorofthe University of the State of New 
York, ivho have graced this occasion by your presid- 
ing; to yotCy members of the Board of Trust, who, in 
the person of your fellow, have now committed to me 
this sacred stewardship ; to you, my comrades of the 
Faculty; to you, Gentlemen of the undergraduate 
classes; to you, my brethren of the Alumjti; and to 
you all, citizens, neighbors, friends — zvelcome, greet- 
ing, and Godspeed! 

AT well-nigh every wedding there are those who delight 
to relate what they may know of the precedent 
courtship, of the lineage, attainments, acquisitions, 
of the twain, and some there are to raise their shoulders or 
their eyebrows at mention of the bride's large years and 
little dower, or of the bridegroom's demerit and presump- 
tion. 

If such censors were here I would only remind them that 
1892 was a leap year, and that, for the rest, having always 
loved my royal mistress, now that under her prerogative 
she has so condescended, I can only plight troth for troth, 
as here with all my heart I do, "to love, honor and cher- 
ish." 

I hope that, if not in the family, 3^ou are all so ready to 
b)e counted as close friends, that no hand will to-day refuse 
its modicum of rice! I did not dare add the words, "till 
death do us part ;" for I do not forget what hazards lurk 
along the path of this responsibility : but if to-day I knew 
that the purpose of God contained those words, for myself 
I should be glad.. 

If, merciful both in restraint and in guidance. He shall 
grant to me the affection of young men and the confidence of 
old, and shall suffer me to survive neither the love of activ- 



. INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 29 

ity nor the power of usefulness, then have I no other 
ambition than to be found faithful and fruitful in this trust, 
and in time to be afforded a pillow under the grass in that 
plot where — '^ admissi ad gradum honorarium' — so many 
of our venerable dead already sleep. 

It would be impertinent for me to detain this important 
company with any narrative of the choice of these curators, 
and of my final consent to it. But this much I must say, 
that it is with unfeigned humility that I venture to accept 
this high charge, and that none can hold more important 
than I do certain specific qualifications for it in which 
hitherto I have been but little schooled. For the functions 
of my office require a quality, a variety, a facility, which 
will not only now demand my strenuous best, but an 
increasing better as time runs. May I never forget that 
one can only be a leader as he is a servant, only be a 
teacher as he is a learner, and so may I neither become a 
laggard nor a pedant. 

My errand with you to-day shall not be the development 
of some lofty abstraction in philosophy, tho never was 
there a time when the cogency of vital first principles 
needed clearer enforcement. Nor do I illustrate some 
verity of Faith, nor attempt to construct some bastioned 
argument in Apologetics. I shall not burden you with 
elaborate citation, amazing arithmetic, nor rhetorical pan- 
orama. Still less shall I attempt to garnish platitude with 
apothegm, or to cram the stomach of your sense with the 
mere whipped cream of sesthetic phrase. 

I shall only speak right on of the immediate practical 
concerns of the college that is at once our Mother and our 
Client. 

For clear, learned, compelling, exposition of the funda- 
mental equality to be accorded to heart as well as sense, to 
conscience as well as reason, in any thoro education of the 
creature Man, I reverently refer you to those varied but 
harmonious utterances with which my three immediate 
predecessors graced their inductions into this presidency. 
With these I could not compete, and need not. 



30 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

You, I am sure, will not object, if I limit myself to set- 
ting forth something of the historic claims, the present 
SPIRIT, and the immediate needs of this college — this col- 
lege, of which so many of you are loving sons, and all of 
you, I trust, at no further remove than affectionate cousin- 
ship. 

I. And, first, there is a claim, because there is an hon- 
.orable history. Hamilton persists. She has been and 
.she is. Of the nearly 300 college and universities in these 
United States, we stand in seniority the twenty-eighth. 
It is a far cry to 1812. That was the year when the 
^Guerriere struck her colors to the Constitution, when 
Napoleon retreated from Moscovv^. It was in 1812 that 
'the first house was built where Rochester now stands — 
thirty-eight years before the birth of her university. 1812 
was nineteen years prior to the establishment of the Uni- 
'versity of the City of New York. It antedated Lafayette 
by fourteen years, Amherst by thirteen, Trinity by eleven. 
;In 1812 New York city was only twice the present size of 
;Utica. 

But if we march to 1793, (for the college was but the 
-jacademy attaining its majority,) then we find ourselves in 
the natal year of Williams. Then there were but 
.eighteen colleges in the country, and but four of these 
: older than Princeton, whose year was 1747. In 1793 
Columbia was the only college in this State. Union 
..(whose is the only other New York charter outranking 
„ours) was founded in 1795, so that in the opening year of 
Washington's second term that work of education was be- 
gun upon yonder plateau that to this day continues. 

It was in 1799 that President Timothy Dwight, then 
upoti his "Journey to Whitestown," spent an after- 
noon in visiting the Hamilton Oneida Academy. 
{Travels, III, 175.) He found fifty-two students pursu- 
ing, as he says, "English, Latin, Greek, and most of the 
liberal arts and sciences." The teachers were all Yale 
,,men, and the curriculum, tho called academic, went 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 3 1 

i 

inearly as far as that of any college of that period. Presi- 
dent Dwight described the site as *'a noble healthy emi- 
nence, commanding a rich and extensive prospect." 

I may add that our prospects have always been rich and 
•extensive : but alas, not always nor yet entirely at com- 
mand ! 

It was in the year next after this daring adventure into 
the new west, that President Dwight wrote his noble 
hymn — "I love Thy Kingdom, Lord." In the absence of 
.any proof to the contrary, I shall continue to imagine that 
as he stood on the threshold of Hamilton Academy and 
looked forth upon the burnished October, some light from 
the far hills of Deerfield filled his thought, afterward to 
live on in that line : 

" The brightest glories Earth can yield." 

It might well have been some glimpse of the deep devo- 
tion of our founder that inspired that stanza, — 

" For her my tears shall fall, 
For her my prayers ascend, 
To her my cares and toils be given. 
Till cares and toils shall end." 

All of v/hich reminds us that, boy and man, our Hamilton 
survives to its centurial year. This nineteenth cycle was 
'eight years away when Baron Steuben laid that corner 
stone, — May, 1793. 

When one who is now living was graduated seventy- 
■five years ago in our class of 18 18, this American Union 
had twenty States and fewer than nine millions of people. 

If it be true, as Lowell somewhere remarks, that ' ' noth- 
ing with roots can be made to order, " then Hamilton, hav- 
ing, "by reason of strength," come to four-score years, 
has a claim for her age's sake. 

And Hamilton has a claim because of the noble men, 
who have planned, wrought, sacrificed that ' ' this institu- 
tion might grow and flourish" — noble men, and beside 
them, — unadorned by mere degrees, unknown to Triennial 
Catalogs, — noble women, whose grace and fortitude have 



32 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 



shot threads of gold thro all the web, and the gentling and 
encouraging influence of whose timely monitions or soul- 
rousing approvals still lives and widens. 

Never will we forget to name, before all, the sturdy 
forecast and the stubborn faith of him to whom, under 
God, our college owes her life. We gladly recognize our 
obligation to Princeton, in that from one of her early 
classes, that of 1765, she gave us Samuel Kirkland. 

I cannot now recite his personal story : but his was a 
commanding name — patriot, pioneer, Revolutionary chap- 
lain, wise to win the hearts of Indian tribes and the advice 
and countenance of statesmen, (for Washington was one who 
counselled his plans for this region,) he forced the gates of a 
wilderness by the weapons of the Gospel, and, gathering in 
one embrace frontiersman and savage, he signed those 
rude beginnings with the sign of the cross. W^e enter into 
his labors, we will share his hope, emulate his faith that 
* ' endured as seeing the invisible, " and pledge our hearts 
and hands that the lamp he lighted shall not be put out ! 

Hamilton owes her very life to the spirit of Christian 
missions. She does not renounce that debt. Nay, by the 
men who, in the spirit of her founder, have gone near and 
far to ' ' aid the reign of virtue and the kingdom of the 
Blessed Redeemer," so that in the Sandwich Islands, and 
Ceylon, and Japan, and China, and by a hundred rivers, 
nay, all across our own land, the spiritual descendants of 
Kirkland live to God — the debt is acknowledged and il- 
lumined. 

In eighty years eight presidents have stood at the helm 
of these affairs. Various in gifts and in methods, they 
were high-minded and single-minded men, worthy, each in 
his own way, of admiration and honor. Of them five 
were sons of Yale, and one each of Dublin, Dartmouth 
and Amherst. 

The rugged sense and warm heart of Azel Backus (too 
early dead !) is still a bright familiar legend, and next, tho 
the record seems further away, came the long-suffering but 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 33 

triumphant fidelity of Henry Davis, whose face and whose 
traits bore striking resemblance to Andrew Jackson, then 
chief magistrate. After these the two years of Sereno 
Dwight the beautiful, and then the brief unflinching reign 
of Joseph Penny. So passed the first period, and it was 
1839. The winter of discontent was over, and there are 
many of you now here who ripened to your degrees under 
the placid and mellowing influences of Simeon North. 

Then came the urgency of Dr. Fisher, the urbanity of Dr. 
Brown, the suavity of Dr. Darling. 

I well remember how President Fisher overawed my im- 
agination in that room where I took my entrance examina- 
tions. It was my only sight of him. But there are scores 
here who recall his eloquence, his ardor, his alertness. 
Central New York, and the regions beyond, knew the col- 
lege in his person, and knew it to admire. 

Of all the excellence of Dr. Darling's work, so well 
known to you all, nothing was more fortunate and more 
welcome than his securing to us the friendship and counsel 
of that one of our trustees whose timely good-will is wit- 
nessed by Silliman Hall, and who has now been the fore- 
most in generous zeal toward fully endowing the presi- 
dent's chair. I never touched the hand of Dr. Darling 
save once : but in this near friend of his I appreciate his 
influence, and that the modesty of Dr. Silliman declined 
the succession to the presidency invests the associations of 
this office with a heightened honor. But, of these three 
latest presidents, it is of him whom I remember best that 
I would speak most reverently — Samuel Oilman Brown. 
Modesty, scholarship, purity of motive, nobility of counten- 
ance, dignity of presence, force of address, these — rare 
combination ! — all were his. He was, both in his Christian 
forbearance and his uplifted mind, Philip Sydney's gentle- 
man — 

" High thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." 
Hamilton College claims these as her leaders and they 
have given to her their fame. 
c 



54 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

And her history is honorable for her urgent and expert 
teachers. The names of Noyes, and Norton, of Strong 
and Lathrop and Dwight, of Cathn and Root, are indehble 
in a thousand memories. And so is his who, with the brow 
of a sage and the simphcity of a child, made our College 
known in two hemispheres as with forty-eight asteroids he 
fastened her name upon the curtains of the night ! His 
work linked with the memory of that large appreciation 
which endowed its department, Dr. Peters, Litchfield Di- 
rector of the Observatory, lived solitary and died alone. 
His last vigil ended with the steps of North College for 
his pillow and the heavens he had mapped for his counter- 
pane — per astra ad astra ! 

And not only do we set forth those who have ' ' gone 
into that world of light :" but the living, too, are our ar- 
gument. He honors us to-day whose labors and example 
gave Hamilton a recognized supremacy in the graces and 
strengths of oral and written expression, and in his mature 
dignities we unitedly rejoice. 

And yet again there is one whom "age cannot wither 
nor custom stale." In variety not only, but in rarity, he 
moves among us as now since 1843 he has moved, genial 
even in his silences, gentle in his judgments, shy to what 1 
in any other were a fault, sure as the lode-star. What 
romantic heart of all the scattered nurslings of our Doric I 
Yankee, our Oneida County Theocritus, does not turn due | 
North as the good jubilee of his service draws so near } 
Which of us does not hope that there may be for him the 
caesura of many a useful year between " Half-way-up" and 
Heaven. 

I speak these things as "all in the family." This is 
what intensifies our noblesse oblige and rejoices us to re- 
member that "God hath often a great share in a little 
house." 

Hamilton College has ever had a hard-working Faculty, 
and that was never truer than to-day. I would emphasize 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 35 

my testimony to their deep accord, their friendly sym- 
pathy and their disinterested zeal for a common end. 

Hamilton claims respect for her Trustees. They have 
been men whose names would never have been lent to a 
cause in which they did not believe. From Alexander 
Hamilton down, thro Dirck Lansing, Thomas Hubbard, 
Gerrit Smith, William Maynard, John Frost, Joshua Spen- 
cer, Newton Dexter, Hiram Denio, Samuel Woolworth, 
Horatio Seymour, William Walcott, William Wisner, 
Thomas Hastings, Francis Ellinwood, Theodore Dwight, 
James Shaw, John Jay Knox, these and their peers in this 
trust, (not to name the living Curators) were men who 
lived and labored for a thing whose foundations they re- 
spected and whose fame they cheerfully upheld. Look 
into the faces of their successors and behold our guaran- 
tees ! 

Hamilton urges the claim made good in her graduated 
men. She is the mother of Gracchi — her wealth is in her 
sons. 

She has sent forth a company of eager, well-rounded, 
practical citizens. I name none of them. They are in law 
and letters, in science and in a,rt, they are legislators and 
teachers, they are editors and preachers, they are bankers 
and farmers; but whatever they are in they are in it v/ith 
both hands and with all their hearts. For their numbers, 
in all that makes competency, usefulness, influence and 
honor, their record is inferior to none. 

I ask practical investors here w^hether, for the size of the 
plant, it is not a great output, whether for the capital paid 
in, it is not a large dividend. And, by the records, .not 
only have the sons of Hamilton been practical, they have 
been patriotic. They have honored the principles of that 
great federalist whose name they bear. They love the 
Union and the flag. They loved the flag when it had but 
fifteen stars and they will love it v\^hen it carries fifty ! For 
their country's sake many of them are stelligerents by God's 



36 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

brevet. See how our catalog of 1864 is starred and 
crossed, and that is but the roll of undergraduate patriots. 

And again this college is avowedly a Christian institu- 
tion. With prayers for ' ' the smiles of the God of 
wisdom, " and in loving loyalty to ' * the Kingdom of the 
Blessed Redeemer" its foundations were laid, and in that 
prayer and that loyalty have continued an unbroken suc- 
cession of teachers and students. Many a soul has found 
the Way of Life along those campus paths. 

May my hand wither and my tongue be dumb if gesture 
or word of mine shall ever be untrue to that tradition of 
simple and sincere Christianity. Our birthright is not for 
sale. To forget our fundamental relation to religion would 
be to renounce our identity. We do not quarrel over our 
position, we proclaim it, and if there are any to whom it is 
distasteful they are not compelled; they can go elsewhere. 

But let it be plainly understood that, while essentially 
and elementally Christian, Hamilton is neither inspired by 
a sectarian feeling nor subject to a denominational control. 

Its affinity is largely Presbyterian; with two notable ex- 
ceptions it has been endowed by the money of Presbyteri- 
ans (as, in this latitude, I have observed many things are 
apt to be;) to two of its chairs Presbyterian conditions are 
attached, perhaps a plurality of its students have come 
from Presbyterian or Congregational homes; many of its 
graduates are Presbyterian ministers, tho not a few are in 
Episcopalian orders and one of them is now a bishop of 
that church; within our walls, tho entirely aside from col- 
lege control, is maintained the college church and in that 
church the Presbyterian order is observed. 

But direct responsibility to the Presbyterian Church as 
such the college has none, and I trust will never have. 
The surest guarantees are extra-legal. Hamilton is neither 
sectarian nor secular ; but she is distinctly evangelical and 
there abides. Her trustees are chosen under no denomina- 
tional restrictions. Her policy bears no ecclesiastical 
imprimatur. Students from every quarter are impartially 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 37 

received and graduated. Religious favoritism there is 
none. 

But Christianity is respected, studied, preached, and 
aspired to. And herein we, at once, refute all save the 
objections of those who prefer *'an Unknown God," and 
bespeak the confidence of all Christian households. For 
we believe that Knowledge and pure Religion are as vitally 
united as are the two lobes of the brain. They who would 
sunder education and apportion its fragments are like her 
whose falseness Solomon detected in her ready consent to 
have cleft in twain the child of another mother and to 
accept for her part the dead half thereof ! 

There is one * ' Name that is above every name " — ' ' tower- 
ing o'er the wrecks of time" — He is to us ''Lux et Veritas,'" 
and ''if we be reproached for the name of Christ, happy 
are we." 

Let that day never dawn when we shall cease to unite 
worship with work, or when we shall disappoint that 
body of Christian believers, which, wider than any species, 
makes up the generic church, and which the good phrase 
of the Episcopal liturgy describes as "the blessed company 
of all faithful people." 

Christian men of many ''given names" have loved Ham- 
ilton, given her their sons, equipped her departments, 
taught from her chairs, accepted her honors, and thus 
approving her emphatic Christian traditions they do now 
trust her honor to maintain them. 

Here also we do not hesitate to observe that for all invest- 
ment in Christian colleges the Church at large has received 
seven-fold usury. 

And not only does Hamilton honor her history, she does 
not apologize for her location — nay she advances it as an 
argument. In many ways the rural site is advantageous. 
Soon enough will come the neural strain of the world's 
enterprise, and the agitations of the "madding crowd." In 
this wholesome village, convenient and yet separate, there 
are no distractions. It is favorable to an economy that 



38 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

yet suggests nothing invidious. Studious energy can do its 
best. The soul arouses. Far above the tilth of the val- 
ley, beautiful for situation, fronting the morning, our Alma 
Mater sits steadfastly while the century grov/s old. Hor- 
izoned by perpetual hills, she lifts the understanding eyes 
to heights beyond them. Taking the hand of generous 
youth, she points his glance along romantic vistas that 
waken ideality, "whispers low to him thou must !" until he 
replies ' ' I can, " encourages his tasks with bright examples, 
allures his better self from his baser, gathers him to her 
knees for prayer. 

Far away are the tumults of commerce, the stress of 
work and sorrov\^, the discords of organized wrong. The 
arching elms shelter nobler imaginings than those of a 
Helicon, the sober buildings stand as the palimpsests of 
countless memories and under the evening star seem to be 
thronged with unsounding footsteps and thrilled with the 
shreds of the song of long ago. The old well yields those 
waters that will be remembered, as David once thirsted for 
that by Bethlehem's gate. The chapel bell gathers the 
swinging groups to the moments of worship, to the class- 
room with its moral victories, to the Wednesday and 
Saturday forum, and as it tolls the swift hours it lifts bel- 
fries in memory where it shall ring on. I feel that I speak 
for many of you, to-day, who beyond all words are grateful 
for the ideals that there beckoned you, and that, recalling 
that threshold of invitation and resolve, you can say, ' ' I 
was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." 

Dear Mother ! if your fingers are pricked and bent with 
your unselfish offices, if your gown is plain and 3'our sim- 
plicity unjeweled, you are ours and with filial gratitude we 
turn to your open arms ! We believe that the scene of 
Hamilton's history is a sufficient arena for her destiny. 

Nor do we blush for our record as a small college. We 
remember how Daniel Webster said of Dartmouth, and 
gladly adapt his rhetoric of the heart to say — "there are 
some of us who love this little college." We boldly urge 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 39 

that in many ways the ' ' small college " issues the largest 
men. A very short time since a Harvard man remarked 
to me that in his opinion the country could better spare 
the big universities than the little colleges. There is no 
occasion either for envy or for disparagement. The fact re- 
mains that the smaller groups of men come closer together — 
intimacies, emulations, consideration, — these are more fos- 
tered. And not only does lateral influence (that which 
quite aside from the curriculum, is yet its best adjunct) 
count for more : but also the force of the instruction itself 
is more direct and vertical. Personality has full oppor- 
tunity. The men of Williams who came under the force 
of his conviction and charm will never forget the inspira- 
tion of the gospel according to Mark Hopkins, nor fail to 
recall him as himself *' an outline study of man." 

My teachers have always been more to me than the tasks 
they set. Character is a signet. Influence surpasses in- 
struction. It is life that quickens. The smaller college 
increases the ratio of the particular man. It fosters indi- 
viduality — every teacher comies to know every student — 
and individuality stimulates decisiveness, frankness, enter- 
prise. The product is '* hand-made." Simplicity is honor- 
able. When we venerate the memory of that Home 
Missionary genius, Henry Kendall, we are not ashamed to 
recall that, to save the boots he carried in his hand, he 
left his home barefooted to join the little class of 1840 — a 
class that was also to graduate a Scofield, a Nelson, a Mil- 
ler, a Knox, and a Dwight. 

It is to-day the colleges, and largely the smaller and 
more conservative ones, that are upholding the standards 
of mental education as against the more spacious standards 
of mental acquisition. They need not hesitate to compare 
their courses of study with parallel courses anywhere. In 
this age of the slot the '' softer " university courses are 
thronged with men who could not meet a stiff college course 
in Arts. The average college man need not fear to com- 
pete with the average university man upon equal terms. 



40 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

Hamilton is willing to ask confidence strictly as a college, 
and does not aspire to become a university. We are not 
unwilling to be larger, but a college we will remain. The 
time arrives when the distinctive calling and election of the 
college as such comes to appreciation. If its work is intro- 
ductory it is also indispensable. For there are three obvi- 
ous stages of study — correlated and distinct — the elemen- 
tary^ the disciplinary and the specializi?ig. 

There are colleges that fail because they are willing 
to be no more than high schools, and there are colleges that 
fail because they are willing to be no less than universities. 

The steadfast, self-respecting, actual college stands be- 
tween. It neither quarrels nor imitates. It perceives that 
its preeminent task is disciplinary. Its investigations are 
primarily for the development of the investigator. ■ It is 
forging men. Its chief work should be upon the mind 
itself as the agent and implement. It dwells upon the 
tactics of thought. It summons to self-knowledge. Its 
course is a mental athletic. 

Hamilton does not stand for mere sporadic electives, for 
that immature and incoherent dabbling in specialties whose 
result is so much of sciolism: but for that kind of work 
which keens perception, arrests sophistication, teaches ex- 
actness and discrimination, inspires candor, and urges 
toward comprehensiveness. And for these qualities, and 
their like, equally as needful to triumphant investigation as 
to victory in affairs, I, for one, maintain that the old course 
in Arts is the surest tutor. There are plenty now 'o days 
to repudiate the term *' liberal education" and to deny it 
of meaning. But still we believe that exactly what that 
term has hitherto stood for — the introduction not only to 
the realm but still more to the processes of knowledge; 
thro the dignity and order of the Latin; the refinement 
and enlargement of the Greek; the exactness of mathemat- 
ics and logic; the self-examination of mental and moral 
philosophy; the practical application of rhetoric, both in 
the chastening of style and teaching of oral command; 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 4 1 

the cultivation of a taste for that undefiled Literature 
that wells from Chaucer to Tennyson, and of appreciation 
for the marvellous assimilative genius and elastic adapta- 
tions of the English tongue, leading up to the deep rela- 
tions between language and life; the world sympathy that 
is developed in the departments of History and of Modern 
Languages; the broadening of all intelligence and rever- 
ence that comes along the fascinating ways of physical 
science; and a wholesome preface to the practical demands 
of economics and sociology — thro these, I say, a man has 
a liberal education — that is a free out-drawing of his mental 
powers. The objects of specialization will come later, and 
range will be more intelligently selected for life work; 
now it is the man himself who is the specialty. 

It is just such a thoro preliminary discipline of the ob- 
serving and discursive intellect that shall best guard from 
the obvious dangers of specialism — the dangers, first of 
narrowness, then of the disdain narrowness breeds, then of 
the reaction from disdain into mental despair. The disap- 
pointment into which a fancied omniscience is sure to fall, 
may be prevented by a timely and thoro sense of limita- 
tions. For all analysis that is coherent is in order to 
■synthesis. The specialist must become the generalist. 
Objects may be segregated and studied thro a tube: but 
their combinations require the naked eyes. Specialism is 
partial to one sphere and often ignorant and unpractical 
beyond it. It is the task of the college to announce this 
goal so that it shall never be forgotten — that the inspection 
of instances is but preparatory to reflection upon principles 
— that facts are the syllables of law — that a grand induction 
is the hope and home of reason. 

Whether such a discipline introduces to further study or 
to the realm of action — whether one is to be jurist or legis- 
lator, physician or pastor, to control brain or brawn — still 
it is the discipline that forfends mental lop-sidedness, and 
that will best stand wear and tear. 

That is sound regimen which makes souls alert and en- 



42 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

thusiastic for constructive results, which to the industry of 
the wits adds tenacity of will, and which, in the happy 
phrase of Mr. Depew, ' ' enables a man to do difficult things 
easily and irksome things cheerfully. " 

Incidentally, I will here remark upon that folly which 
with its * ' senses unexercised " precipitates its crudeness 
upon either advanced technical study or upon business life. 
Those who desire to shorten their course are ordinarily 
those who need to have it lengthened ! He who slurs these 
years of ready-making, consents, by so much, to have iron 
tools rather than steel. He leaves out of the problem of 
his enterprise one of the prime factors — facility, and he 
forgoes that intellectual s avoir faire which gives zest to a.11 
pursuits. His expectancy of result may be greater at 
thirty, but it will be less at forty ! 

And before I quit the consideration of the right of 
this college to our own loyalty and to the regard of all 
thoughtful men, I must affirm, that if any college wdthin 
her bounds has a claim upon the bounty of the government 
of New York — Hamilton more ! The State, as such, ap- 
proved and assisted her beginnings, and no school between 
Niagara and Montauk Point has furnished to the State 
such a proportionate share of teachers of the higher grades. . 

If the Legislature is to succor our universities and col- 
leges, let that succor be general, and let it not be granted 
for an instant that any one institution has a doiuifiant or 
exclusive claim. 

H. And so, by a.n easy modulation, I continue, and 
speak next of what I conceive the Spirit of our College is 
now and ever should be. 

First, thoroness. So far as we go and in our true do- 
main there must be no shuffling or pretence. The entrance 
requirements must be met, the schedule substantially ad- 
hered to, and the terms of scholarship, and the conditions of 
residence and of advancement to degrees, respected to the 
letter. 

Honest admonition should be blended with hearty en- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 43 

couragement, and patience have her perfect work : but 
idleness and perversity should ''be suffered to depart." 
The friendliest and frankest relation between faculty and 
students should be a direct stimulation to every instructor 
and to every classman to do each his stubborn best. 

The spirit of criticism should be sustained — of that true 
criticism which is genial, because it does not despond of 
the thoroness it seeks. For the accent of wholesome criti- 
cism (z. e. judicial estimate) must be that of sympathy and 
not of irony. Hope is a great incentive. 

Six hours of study, for every full college day, is not too 
much to expect as a minimum from any man whose health 
and attainments warrant his enrollment. 

The ' ' lazy, yawning drones " must not burden the indus- 
trious bees : but they rather must recall their preparatory 

Virgil, 

" aginine facto 
Ignavum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent." 

Our course to-day compares well with that of any other 
college in the land, and is far above the average, and we 
are confident that the undergraduates who have a course 
that compels their respect will become the alumni who 
will win for us, and themselves show to us, the most regard. 

And secondly, as to our spirit, it must be truly liberal 

and broad. And by liberality I do not mean that liberal- 

is7n which burns its house to bake its bread while it 

munches the mouldy shibboleths of denial ; by breadth, I 

do not mean that meandering uncertainty in which a 

strong, clean river shallows out into a swamp, where one 

can neither wade nor swim ; but I mean a great hospitality 

for all new light, for all new phases of old truth ; a great 

welcome to all reality, even tho laziness is recalcitrant at 

its demands upon thought ; an eagerness to march near 

the colors, a modesty that does not posture, a courage that 

does not flinch, an expectant attention that yet is not 

always discovering speculative "mare's nests!" 

Not only 

"Nature's infinite book of secrecy" 



44 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

but the wonders of the soul itself open to that spirit. 
It is the spirit of outlook and of command. 

And we will be brave. We will train men to reserve 
some interrogations until the dawn of a ' ' morning without 
clouds," and meanwhile to be sure that truth cannot be 
worsted, that God's postponements are not delays, that 
man is not the surd of Creation, that 

" every time 
Serves for the matter that is then born in't," 

That, because the problems of the world are problems 
and not mere puzzles, therefore they are worthy of tasks 
that they will reward, and that so all pessimism is the phil- 
osophy of a white liver and an impoverished heart ! 

We will be brave, too, over our own qualified resources 
and facilities. We open our books wide and challenge 
inspection. Our ledgers are absolutely lucid. We are 
matching frugality with honesty. While we pray for 
more, that we may plan to do more, we will now do our 
best with what we have now in hand. We will not worry, 
nor whimper, nor pause, nor deviate, and we will be 
heard! Hamilton College does not ''borrow leave to be," 
nor is it for sale ! 

Our spirit shall be reverent. We believe. If it be 
true, as Herbert Spencer says, that ''to prepare for com- 
plete living is the function which education has to dis- 
charge," then must the higher education ever tend toward 
the highest. Life is complete only in Him, the lofty record 
of whose revelation opens with what is at once the Alpha 
of that insight which we call religion, and the Omega of 
that eye-sight which we call science — "In the beginning, 
God." 

For honesty to the phenomena of being does more than 

to give 

" An eye well practiced in nature ; 

A spirit bounded and poor." 

It sets forth the entire problem — Creation, Creature and 
Creator. All things are correlated in that ultimate law 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 45 

' ' whose seat is the bosom of God. " From Him all radiates 
and upon Him all converges. For this is no segmental 
universe but all coordinated in its Upholder. It is filled 
with Mind and Will ; but these are not adjectives of mat- 
ter, they are attributes of personality. ''And this God is 
our God!" Nature's unbroken testimony is unconscious. 
It is a book and not a reader. Man reads and is irrefuta- 
bly aware of that Immanent and Transcendent One, in 
whom he lives and moves and has his being. An educa- 
tion which does not rise to this intellectual and spiritual 
self-respect is an arch without a key-stone, a cone trun- 
cated, an attempt to describe a real arc from an imaginary 
centre ! 

That the necessary processes of thought are trustworthy 
and correspondent with infinite and eternal reality, that 
the intuitions of the soul — ''truths that wake to perish 
never," are valid, that the impulse to pray is counterproof 
of Him who, ' ' is greater than our hearts and knoweth all 
things," these must underlie any sane instruction. Out- 
sideness demands insidedness as its interpreter and or- 
ganon. 

A mind, not unbalanced, must perceive that the great 
sorites of outer facts moves to a conclusion. All things 
make up the premises of a judgment. As we read a book 
to find its author's thought, not test it with calipers, or 
acids, or balances, so if I can only describe nature in phys- 
ical terms I miss its meaning. Man's faculties prompt him 
to seek ' ' the ends of being" — chief ends, and the first 
answer of the Shorter Catechism is a reply to every cui 
bono ! For final cause, — the whereforef and whither? — 
are inevitable to our minds. We must be sure that ' ' spirits 
are not finely touched but to fine issues," and aspiration is 
as absolutely real as are the facts of mathematics. Be- 
tween the world perceived and the perceiving mind gleams 
the shechinah. 

The apotheosis of mere knowledge and the renunciation 
of its supreme conclusion cannot meet ' ' the demand of 



46 HAMILTON COLLEGE 

the age;" for the " demand of the age" is the demand of 
the ages — God. ^ 

Long ago I felt the pov/er and lesson of Hawthorne's 
parable of ' ' Rappaccini's Daughter ;" but that suggestion of 
a soul bred upon negations, and taught to play fast and 
loose with first principles, is all realized in the stupendous 
sadnes? of the autobiography of John Stuart Mill ! 

We know that we were not so ' ' fearfully and wonder- 
fully made" to be the sport of illusions, and the firmament 
of reason is pillared at least upon the veracity of God. 

That spirit which ' ' ever learns and never knows" shall 
not be ours ; for if, carefull}^ cleansed and accurately used, 
we cannot trust the observing instrument, then how can 
we trust any of its observations ? The nihilistic philosophy 
saws off the bough its sits on ! It makes the ludicrous 
proposition that ''science" is nescience ! The affected 
myopy which extirpates capacity by disuse, might well recall 
that ancient fable which tells how Argus slept, and lost his 
hundred eyes to furnish forth the tail of Juno's peacock ! 

The atrophy of faith is not innocent. In that splendid 
monograph upon "The Ideal of God," wherein he dis- 
courses upon a ''reasonableness in the universe," a "dis- 
tinct dramatic tendency," "the working out of a mighty 
teleology, "Prof. JohnFiske says this — ' 'the term Unknowable 
describes only one aspect of Deity, but has been seized upon by 
shallow writers of every school and made the theme of the 
most dismal twaddle since the days of medisevel scholas- 
ticism. " He affirms ' ' a Power disclosed in every throb of 
the mighty rhythmic life of the universe, knowable as the 
eternal source of a Moral Law which is implicated with 
each action of our lives," and he observes that "as there 
are those who live in a perpetual dread of the time when 
science shall banish God from the world, so on the other 
hand there are those who look forward with longing to such 
a time, and in their impatience are continually starting up 
and proclaiming that it has at last come." I quote thus 
much of Prof. Fiske, because he is in this country the ac- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 4/ 

credited expositor of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the Athen- 
ians who care nothing for a Hebrew prophet, may perhaps 
heed this "one of their own poets," who yet further wit- 
nesses, * ' The craving for final cause can no more be ex- 
tinguished than our behef in objective reahty." "There 
can be no antagonism between our duty as inquirers and 
our duty as worshippers ; . . . . each act of scientific 
explanation but reveals an opening thro which shines the 
Eternal Majesty." "As in the roaring loom of Time the 
endless web of events is woven each strand shall make 
more and more clearly visible the living garment of God." 

Hamilton College will not be found countenancing that 
petitio principii which presumes to limit the word ' ' sci- 
ence" merely to the arrangement of physical facts. It will 
not abandon a soul that is ' ' feeling after God" to that 
mocking formula suggested by Mr. Frederick Harrison, "O 
Xn, help us !" 

We will not suffer any of our philosophical territory to 
be preempted by that truculent sophism that the conflict 
of some scientists with some religionists proves the conflict 
of all religion with all science. The truth is that neither 
religionists nor scientists can claim a monopoly of blunders. 
Either cause has suffered from its belligerent champions. 
Many a polemical gun, in either hand has been more hon- 
ored in the breech than in the muzzle. Mr. Huxley's com- 
pliments to the extinguished theologians lying strangled 
about the various cradles of science may be politely re- 
turned by them. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and the 
rest surely throttled the pseudo-scientists who throve be- 
fore the}' came. It is a poor contention that arrays in op- 
position the two great functions of reason. 

" The universe (says James Martineau, in that pungent 
book of his upon Materialism) as known, being throout a 
system of thought-relations can subsist only in an Eternal 
Mind that thinks it." "That those who labor to render 
the universe intelligible should call in question its relation 
to intelligence is one of those curious inconsistencies to 



48 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

which the ablest speciaHsts are often the most Hable when 
meditating in foreign fields." [p. 26.] 

But the spirit of this college is more than merely 
Theistic, — it is Christian. We believe in that Life, which 
was, and which is, the Light of men. We find that the 
* ' increasing purpose" in all history is the increase of His 
government, and hold that it is a mental as well as a moral | 
injury to study this world's events apart from the " Kingdom 
of the Redeemer." 

We honor above all books this Bible. In this " divine 
library" as Jerome called it, essential and necessary truths 
find their highest recognition and satisfaction, and we shall 
earnestly study and teach its precepts as the regulative 
and goal of all other knowledge. 

One hour of every week thro the course is assigned to this 
work. We make room for this book because it is august 
as literature — Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, John — here are 
authors whose neglect marks uncultivation and ' ' Philistin- 
ism. " But far more, we make room for it because it meets 
that ' ' human reason which is forced to consider questions 
it cannot answer, but cannot decline," and leads it, under 
the disciplines of faith, to *' the proving of things not seen " 
and * ' the blessedness of being little ; " because it is the 
key to the only rational study of man and institutions ; 
because it develops that spiritual imagination which is truly 
scientific and which accords with Kepler's rhapsody, — 

" I think Thy thoughts, O God ! " 

Here are the planetary laws of the soul. Here are 
reared the strong barriers of social order which stand not 
in bare intellectualism, but in the education of conscience 
and the culture of moral force. Here, in the rights of 
God, are laid the only sure foundations of obligation. 
Unscriptural, unchristian ethics are not worth the ink they 
waste. Here is shown, what apart from this revelation 
was never guessed, that **love is the fulfillment of law." 
Here are set forth those sanctions of law which, besetting 
us behind and before, are set forth as constant monitors 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 49 

from a Holy God. Here, above all, is shrined word and 
act that made the complete life of that Royal One whose 
life is at once the perfect motive and the highest power. 
It is He, made after "the power of an endless life," who 
is the last interpreter of being. 

From the obvious affinity between material greed and 
moral despair, we turn as our last hope to that unselfish 
life, whose supreme law of sacrifice is the only solvent, 
either in economics or sociology, for the questions that 
more and more array mankind in agitation and alarm. 
Profoundly I believe that society must either become 
Christian or must collapse ! Profoundly I believe that, 
above letters, laws, sciences, arts, religio, — the binding-to, 
the relation, of God to man, — has eminent domain. 

It was in this spirit that there were given to us a Barnes, 
a Robinson and a Dibble, and by all our ennobled living 
and ennobling dead we will keep the faith. 

We would send forth men with clear eyes and clear 
hearts ; men who have themselves in hand ; men in whom 
utilitarianism has not frozen enthusiasm at the roots ; 
men forewarned against the mania of acquisitiveness ; 
men whose comprehensive training is not so much tech- 
nical as humanistic, based upon the noblest literatures and 
crowned with a spiritual philosophy ; men who do not 
"spell success with all the s's barred for dollar marks," 
and who know that mere self-pleasing, in any form, but 
"sells eternity to get a toy;" men with their inmost natures 
so resolutely schooled in reverence to the soul and to its 
Owner, that they shall not play the cynic toward the mys- 
tery of life, but shall have faith both to read the riddle and 
bear the burden of a transition age, and to say with noble 
Sidney Lanier, — 

"'Tis a half time; but time shall make it whole." 

III. And now I come to speak, and it must be with 
more brevity, of the Immicdiate Needs of our college. 

(a.) First of all I name equipment. One may suffer 

D 



50 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

embarrassment yet not be ashamed, and that thus far we 
have had so Httle to do with prompts us to be thankful that 
with that Httle we have done so much. But the meagre 
measures of time gone will no longer suffice. Possibility 
makes demands. Opportunity compels us. The future 
knocks at the door. There must be renaissance or re- 
crudescence. We can wear our couleiir de rose as a bloom 
and not as a blush only as constant to our purposes we 
face our task and issue it. 

Our affairs still need a change of air; their crisis is past, 
they are convalescent; but they are by no means in robust 
health. 

The louring day of depletion of resources is gone by. 
Never again will we permit even the direst exigency to in- 
vade our principal. By rigid restraints we live within our 
income. We make ends meet, and when we cannot pay 
we will not go. Our ledgers are open to any one who 
have any claim to inspect them. Our endowments, with 
their repective investments, are all kept in strict severalty. 

But while our economies preclude debt they also hinde^ 
that outreach to which these hours of the world invite and 
constrain us. 

Our actual present productive assets are in round num- 
bers $340,000, and our expectancy of income, from all 
sources, is a little less than $30,000. 

I venture to insist that our foremost duty is to secure to 
the chairs already existing an income which shall be a more 
respectable recognition of the labors of their occupants. 
$1,500 has hitherto been the pay of our full professors. I 
submit that for a mature man, far past apprenticeship, 
trained, scholarly, devoted and hard worked, this sum is 
shameful underpay ! A good machine needs plenty of fuel. 
$1, 500 will indeed postpone death but it will not furnish the 
full mental and physical pabulum that a busy-brained man 
needs. To say nothing of books, in which no teacher 
should be forced to stint himself, and of that relaxation and 
-change of scene which every mental horizon must have or 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 5 I 

else contract upon itself, — this named sum cannot give that 

peace of mind for the future which it is necessary to secure 

for the exactions of a professor's work. That brave men 

have struggled on here in dignified silence may prove that 

such limitations can be borne; but does not prove that 

they are either just or prudent. I say not prudent; 

for ere now we have been forced to lose those who were 

fain to stay, and whose going was an irreparable loss, and 

such a stipend leaves any chair, for all that we can control, 

at the mercy of any other institution when it would court 

our ablest men. I believe in confidence in God and I also 

believe in good faith to men, but I would have them in 

concert, not in collision. I despise the bland sanctimony 

which puts ' ' In God we Trust" upon an alleged dollar 

which is worth but sixty cents ! 

We must be fairer to the men whom we call for a long 

term of years, lest we merit that biting scorn of Swift's — 

" Indifference, clad in wisdom's guise, 
All fortitude of mind supplies ! 
When they are lashed we kiss the rod 
Resigned to the will of God !" 

I insist that a good professor should be a man at least as 
well paid as a good plumber ! 

I respectfully ask whether, for a full professor, who has 
taken technical courses, who has served well and shown 
his capacity as an instructor or an adjunct, — whether $2, 500 
is not a minimum consideration. I am sure it is. I clench 
a nail right there, and so far as influence of mine can go, 
I shall neither cease nor rest until this is secured. But 
our departments that are now best endowed, such as the 
Pratt, the Stone, the Maynard-Knox and the Childs, have 
none of them more than $30,000. One of these, with two 
or three of our inferior foundations, has less than that sum 
by several thousands. Morever, rates of interest, slowly 
to be sure, but steadily, are declining. 

To assure an income of $2, 500 for any prolonged period, 
not less than $50,000 can be defined to be a full and com- 
plete endowment. 



52 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

Nothing less than this amount can e set as the goal to 
which we must plan resolutely to advance all existing en- 
dowments. This also must define our purpose in behalf of 
departments which are now credited only with interroga- 
tions ! It is imperative. I saw this clearly before I re- 
sponded to the overtures of these trustees, and I see it 
plainer now. It must be done. If I did not feel sure that 
it can be done, I should not be here to-day. If it must and 
can be done, it cannot be too soon declared nor too deter- 
minedly undertaken. This indispensable result will require 
all of $200, 000. Among chairs already occupied but ' ' with 
no visible means of support," or with funds so fractional as 
scarcely to be reckoned, are the chairs of Greek, of Philoso- 
phy and Logic, of Physics, of Modern Languages, and of 
English Literature. 

But if we are to go we must grow, and growth absolutely 
requires even already some new departments. Especially 
has the work of the Maynard-Knox department been over- 
loaded. General History, Constitutional Law, Politi- 
cal Economy, and American Civil Polity, — these burdens 
are far too great for one back, however broad. It were 
absurd not to see this. This department should be made 
into at least three, — one to embrace History and Law, 
another Economics and Sociology, and the third American 
History and Institutions. This last would abundantly oc- 
cupy one man. The region where we stand is historic. It 
is revolutionary ground. It gives us a call to associate 
the name of our great sponsor with an especial attention 
to the training of all the men we graduate thoroly to ap- 
preciate the genesis, the genius and the sublime opportun- 
ity of America. We must have this department. And the 
other subjects of Economics and Sociology deserve compe- 
tent and special enlargement. The questions of the time urge 
this discipline upon us. We must send forth those who 
are interested and intelligent concerning the problems of 
government, of production, and of society. 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 53 

We need a chair of Biology and its full equipment of ap- 
paratus, and when this is met we shall be ready to receive 
overtures from some generous friend who shall desire to 
erect a new hall of Physical Science, adequate to domicile 
the three departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. 

We need a chair of Biblical Science. 

We need an endowment for Physical Instruction which 
shall provide for Gymnastic Direction and for tuition in 
Physiology and Hygiene. That would bring to the highest 
usefulness the superb appliances of the new Soper Gymna- 
sium, and would answer in one substantial way Kirkland's 
hope for ' ' enlarging the bounds of human happiness ! " 

Notably must we regard our Library. We want 
immediate outright gift, that can be used wholly in 
supplying the urgent requirements of this arsenal. , If the 
ennobling spirit of literature is to brood over the life on 
yonder hill, we must have more of this ' ' infinite riches in 
a little room," and we must have endowment for a Libra- 
rian who shall give his undivided time to guiding and in- 
creasing the spirit of faithful research among books. 
$5,000 at least could be at once expended upon literary 
tools urgently needed. 

We need provision for annual courses of lectures by in- 
fluential experts, thus supplementing the various themes 
of the class-rooms. The interest of $10,000 would meet 
this need. 

Scholarships are a potent factor in getting and keeping 
students. We have now twenty-five scholarships, *'but 
what are these among so many ? " 

The interest of $2,000 will steadily pay all the college 
dues of one man. The interest of $5,000 will do this, and 
give such further assistance as will make it practicable for 
a man to continue in study who otherwise must forego a 
college course. It is not difficult to attach to such funds 
conditions that shall reserve them for those worthiest in 
character and scholarship. Indeed, such a preference of 
the best men is already our policy in administering these 



54 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

trusts. What better investment could a generous heart 
make of a relatively small sum than thus perpetually to 
sun a noble mind ? 

It would promote undergraduate study and attract to us 
a class of eager scholars if we had certain Fellowships, 
affording to men carefully chosen for aptitude and dili- 
gence a post-graduate year at some university, either at 
home or abroad, to be approved by the faculty. The 
stimulus of such a possible result would be felt in all our work. 
We should have at least five fellowships. Three would 
mean much: but we are willing to begin with one ! I name 
in a general way these — in Philosophy, in Phj^sical Science, 
in Language or Belles Letti^es, in Histor}^ in Pure or Ap- 
plied Mathematics. Ten thousand dollars will found a fel- 
lowship. These — I trust not immodestly, I am sure not 
tediously, unless to those whose minds are resilient from 
the present claims of education — these outline some of the 
salient wants of the college. An exhaustive list would go 
much further. 

But this would swell our needed $200,000 to full $500,- 
000. Is that beyond our faith.-^ I trust not. But let none 
frighten; for we do not to-day expect all this of any one of 
you, nor even of you all ! 

I pause to mention, as a foretoken of good, that, last 
week, a Chicago alumnus promised me an immediate 
$1,000 to be expended as the Campus requires for its care 
and beautifying, and this with the implication that it was 
not the last of it. 

I wish some Eastern man, with a little bright thrill of 
emulation, would have his cheeks " turn Lancastrian," and 
would forthwith utter another equal sum to rebuild (exactly 
as it has been) our decaying chapel spire ! 

I trust that these parenthetical remarks will not mar 
anyone's spontaneity, I rather interject them to illustrate 
an important idea that I trust may rule our future line of 
advance, this, — the policy of presenting specific needs 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 55 

rather than general. Divide et i7npera. We must particu- 
larize, and get our objects out of the remote case. 

One by one our reasonable wants must be stated, and 
one by one, with God's blessing, they shall be met. 

(^.) The other phase of present need, which I cannot 
press too ardently, is that of an increased and intelligent 
sympathy on the part of all our alumni. This must be our 
great public leverage. It has been general, it must be 
unanimous. Knowledge will stir feeling, and feeling will 
prompt action. Dear sirs, you must stand by to counsel, 
to cheer, and to succor : but you will not do this if you 
drift away from knowledge of what the college plans and 
does. If you study your catalogs, read your college publi- 
cation, or gather with that annual group nearest you, and 
come back twice in a while to hear the breezes soughing 
thro the old trees — but I must not preach to day ! Already 
there is cheer in the spirit of accord and of hope among 
the Sons of Hamilton. Let it grow until every man of 
them shall swear Cophetua's royal oath ! Let coterie and 
clique and class, and all other divisions find their subordi- 
nate place, and let it go round and go up, with a shout that 
shall make the old bell vibrate on its stanchions. All of us 
foi^ Hamilton, and Hamilton for us all ! 

With a loyalty so wide, so deep, so alert, so intelligent 
concerning the whole program and progress of the college, 
and so quick and swift to speak and to do for it — we shall 
at last come to our own. If some of the fond desires of 
the past have been ' ' rather like a dream than an assurance, " 
has not the hour at last rung for the deed to ' ' overtake the 
flighty purpose 1 " I dare to believe that ' ' the winter is past, 
the rain is over and gone, the time of the singing is come." 
I believe that by the uprising of us all for the cause, it shall 
be given to some of those, who are still are ours and who, 
working on, have peered longingly for a more benignant day, 
that it shall be given them (I repeat it reverently) to say 
the nunc dimittis, ' ' Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart 
in peace ; for mine eyes have seen." 



5^ HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

We beseech Thee to grant this, Thou King of Glory ! 

It is with hope, that from this day forth I give my un- 
divided mind to the work in hand. 

I can declare to all the careful people of this region that 
the college is worthy of respect and confidence : but to 
you who already love the college for the much that she 
has been to you, aud for the more that she shall be to 
others, to you I speak with a challenge to your sturdiest 
allegiance. To you who are here I speak, and I lift my 
voice and call to all our good constituency, far scattered. 

Men of the East, who even now in Boston are banding 
under the honest magic of the name we love ; — men of 
New York, nigh to home and able often to warm your- 
selves at the old hearth and to drink of the old spring ; 
men of the Middle West ; men of Ohio ; men of Chicago, 
firm in your faith and at the front in your zeal for what 
altars and beacons still are here ; men of Tennessee, of 
Missouri, of Minnesota, of Montana ; you, too, who have 
gone over the Sierras with the intrepid strides these hills 
taught you — to you all I speak to-day. Pull at your hearts, 
and learn how much of what is dearest and best in your 
inmost life is all inwoven with the cause I plead. Hark 
back to your youth. Give the latent love its opportunity. 
Your "Mother" needs you : but do you not also need her.? 
She seeks first "not yours but you." Listen. She will be 
remembered. She asks your hearing, sure then of your 
hearts and hands. She spreads her hands — Mater Caris- 
sima ! She is your client, you are her strength. 

Ah, gallant sirs, that my poor message might be the 
touch to stir the vessel, so that, lo, the liquid long ready 
should start into the crystals of purpose ! We must, breth- 
ren, far and wide, look to you to encourage our work here, 
as you of right must look to us to keep faith with the ideals 
that we hold, together, of what that work should be. If 
by no means the only, nevertheless the first, way to help j 
what we here attempt is by understanding it. We can 
but hope to have solved for us here the right relation of 
labor to capital ! But we want more than mere crass 
money, we want the thrilling power of a great and mag- 
nanimous purpose to be the best school of intellectual and 
spiritual manhood in all this region. 

Let us, then, anevv^, and in the name of God, set up our 
banner, dawn-colored, and across its auroral beauty let us 
write — creed, pledge, prophecy — 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 57 

*' Hamilton expects every man to do his duty." 

With bared heads and hands high-hfted let us swear it 
together, that by the blessing of the God of Samuel Kirk- 
land, there shall in all our lexicon be "no such word as 
fail." 

The best wine last ! By our birthright of blessed faith 
and romance, by our heritage of honorable names, by the 
legacy of patience and sacrifice from those who have 
passed "To where, beyond these voices, there is peace," 
by our present purpose at once devout and brave — it shall 
be given us, at last, in the good measure of God. As our 
work and our worth is, so shall our wealth be in all that is 
really needful. He who, thro many vicissitudes has pre- 
served for one hundred years this Institution for which be- 
lieving hands were outstretched in prayer, will lead us into 
all the ways of the new century that lies far and fair at 
our feet. 

We may march down the eight steps that lie between 
and dare that mighty threshold without presumption and 
without distrust. I gladly borrow and adapt to our present 
mood the recent verse of one of our own sons, poet and 
professor, and would that its last word might never cease : 



a 



Had I the power 

To cast a bell that should from some grand tower, 

At the first Christmas hour, 

Out-ring, 

And fling 

A jubilant message wide, 

The forged metals should be thus allied : — 

No iron Pride, 

But soft Humility, and rich-veined Hope 

Cleft from a sunny slope ; 

And there should be 

White Charity, 

And silvery Love, that knows not Doubt nor Fear, 

To make the peal more clear ; 

And then to firmly fix the fine alloy, 

T!»Tre should be Joy!" 



Address of Tellowship. 

BY CHARLES A. HAWLEY, ESQ., A. M. 

I HAVE sometime fancied or have somewhere read that 
institutions have their seasons. If so, winter fell when 
Dr. Darling died. A grave, strong, courtly man — he had 
the courage of a lion and the tenderness of woman. He 
grasped a great purpose with a grip of iron; but the iron 
hand was gloved with velvet. ' * He kept the company of 
his self-respect." A Christian knight, without fear and 
without deserved reproach, he fell with armor on — promoted 
from the wide field of his earthly labors to the busy, active, 
victorious ' ' rest which remains for the people of God. " 
And the college was without a president. 

In that hour of darkness, but not of dismay, the trustees 
— to use a figure which can never grow threadbare among 
us — the trustees like the magnetic needle turned to the 
north — our North. For his wise and successful adminis- 
tration during that trying period he has the thanks of the 
board and of every friend of the college and added another 
to the long list of services associated with his venerated 
and beloved name. There were months of anxiety; there 
was much correspondence and comparison of views — there 
were many meetings and days and nights of labor. Death 
came to us again and again. We lost the enthusiasm of 
Ellsworth; the keen sagacity of Knox; the sturdy intelli- 
gent devotion of Dwight; the sanctified common sense of 
Kendall. 

But thro all those chill and dreary months, while there 
was discontent, there was no despair. Above us was ever 
bent a sky of hope; for we knew that the college was 
founded to be a means of ' ' aiding the reign of virtue and 
the kingdom of the Blessed Redeemer;" and we felt that 
God was watching over His own. We saw His guiding 
hand in her history, and now He has led us out of cold and 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 59 

darkness into the warmth and Hght of this glad day. The 
words of induction have been spoken; the inaugural de- 
livered; President Stryker is irrevocably our own. '' Now 
is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by 
this son of" Hamilton. 

But summer is the time for work. The crisis was not 
so much in those days as now, when we confront a great 
opportunity. And so, my fellow trustees, brothers of the 
alumni, students, friends of the college, as the best wel- 
come to our new president, I invite you to a fellowship 
with him in honorable service; I invite you to sustain the 
new administration with united love and loyalty. It is a 
worthy cause. The college has walked on high paths 
hitherto. She has stood and still stands, for a wise con- 
servatism in methods of education. 

As I have said of her on another occasion, she is not be- 
guiled from time-honored paths by new-fangled educational 
toys. She believes that education is a leading forth of 
mental faculties, a building up of characters, and not a 
cramming with facts. She believes in making men who 
can write cyclopsedias, and not in making cyclopsedias of 
men. She means to send from her halls lawyers who can 
reason from principles and not be bound in the thralldom 
of precedent; clergymen who preach the Gospel, and not 
the latest fad in esthetics; editors who edit with brains, 
and not withpastepot and scissors. She holds that to pour 
water into a jug does not change the jug; that pouring 
facts into a young mind is not education, especially if you 
permit the young mind to elect as to all, or too many, of 
the facts to be poured in. 

She stands, too, immovable as the hills, for the doc- 
trine that true education cannot be divorced from morality 
and religion; that characters cannot be safely built on the 
shifting sands of unstable beliefs, but must be founded on 
the bed rock of the Christian religion. In short, she makes 
men — broad, cultured, high minded men — and so her 
catalog is crowded with honored names. Her sons have 



60 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

adorned the bar, the forum and the pulpit; and they have 
done effective work in every walk in life. 

We rejoice in her past; but we must not rest in it. For 
not only the fame she has already won, but all her future 
is in our keeping. Let us be faithful to the high trust and 
live up to the spirit of this day. Let us highly resolve that 
we will ever be thoughtful of her needs and responsive to 
her claims. 

The president may guide, our strong and admirable 
faculty give their wisdom and devotion, and the trustees 
their wisest counsel; but for her effective working and full 
development she will yet need the cooperation of alumni 
and friends. 

We should come down to practical work. Seek for 
something to do for the college and be alert to do it. We 
should have that steadiness of purpose that comes from 
conviction of duty, that unity of purpose which begets ir- 
resistible influence and power. Then her past will not 
only be a memory but an inspiration — then her future will 
be assured. Our fidelity will gather to her other friends, 
gain for her an enlarged constituency, a wider field of use- 
fulness and added facilities for her beneficent work. New 
structures will crown our beautiful hill, new endowments 
will be suggested to generous minds, the scholars who fill 
her chairs will have compensation for self-denying labors 
and young men animated by high and noble purposes more 
and more as the years go by will throng her open gates. 

Endowed thus — thus richly dowered with the love of her 

loyal sons, — we may have an assured hope that our radiant 

mother will go down the ages fresh in immortal youth, and 

with ever increasing usefulness and power 

" Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old 
And the leaves of the judgment book unfold." 

I exhort you to steadiness of purpose in this great work 

for I know that we cannot always maintain the exaltation 

and enthusiasm of this hour. We are on the mountain 

tops to-day. But ''beyond the Alps lies Italy." 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 6 1 

Brothers, friends of Christian learning, citizens who 
know that education is the best pohceman and the de- 
fence of pubhc order, patriots who know that knowledge is 
power and a pillar of the State; let us come together; let 
us touch elbows, and under our new and magnetic leader 
go and possess the broad, fair field that lie before us. Let 
us carry to the front our banner blazoned with its legend 
of "light and truth," and as we go with willing hands, 
united hearts and steady purpose into this high and noble 
enterprise, let our slogan be 

" Hamilton to the Fore!" 



Address of the Rev. Arthur S. Hoyt, D. D. 

PRESIDENT STRYKER,— It is a privilege to bring the 
greeting of the men who were college boys with you. 
We have an honest pride in your name and character and 
place. Something of the embodiments, we see in you, of 
the romance and hopes of our young manhood, and we 
pledge you renewed devotion to the college we all love. 

I bring you the greeting of that larger number of what- 
ever class who are called sons of Hamilton. I speak their 
joy in following at last a leader of their own, in the assur- 
ance that memory and motive are now one in their influ- 
ences for the upbuilding of the college. 

I bring you the greeting of that still larger body of the 
Christian Church, always identified with higher education, 
always influential in the history of the college, rejoicing 
in the honor of one of its sons, expecting large blessing 
from his labor. 

I bring you the greeting of your other alma mater, 
trainer of the maturer years, quickener of the highest and 
holiest powers. Without formal connection between the 
two, there may be a more vital and practical relation, if 
both are to do their best work. 

And may I not, without presumption, voice the welcome 
of the faculty, the men who have largely made the col- 
lege, and in whose hands are your future and her future. 
And in this closer greeting you will kindly include the men, 
whose names may no longer be in the catalog, but 
whose hearts are on the hill, whom duty, not love, has called 
to other places of toil. 

We have never lost faith in the college. We have 
larger faith now than ever. Your determined character 
and name, and the watchwords you have already spoken, 
give us good hope that the highest ideal will be followed. 

I. We believe in you because you believe in the col- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 63 

lege. Your presence to-day is proof enough that you put 
the college first. You are here not in answer to the call 
of a party or society. Yours is the filial response to the 
voice of the mother. We hail it as a good omen for the 
future. It points to unity and loyalty. No badge shall be 
as proudly worn as the Hamilton rose. No man shall find 
a place in faculty or Board of Trust save on the sole and 
supreme list of fitness. We have our personal tastes, our 
tender and sacred personal associations ; but all these to- 
day we lay upon the altar of the college. 

2. We believe in you because you have ineniory as well 
as vision. With you progress can not be confounded with 
change ; it will be evolution not revolution. You will build 
on foundations already well laid ; you will grow by the un- 
folding of principles already well tested. 

Is it not a day to recall as well as io foretell ? You 
stand in the place of cultivated and consecrated men. You 
enter into the labors of noble souls. We may transfer to 
the college the very words of Carlyle concerning England : 
"Hamilton has had many possessors that have changed 
from epoch to epoch ; but its real creators and eternal pro- 
prietors are — all the heroic souls that ever were here, each 
in his degree, all the men that ever did or said a true or 
valiant thing." May you cherish and strengthen in your 
own person the influences of this noble line of presidents. 

And you have the privilege of standing among men, two 
of them your beloved teachers, another an honored class- 
mate, and others men of tried ability in college work. It 
is not in your nature to promote your place and power at 
their expense. You can have no favorites ; and you will 
have only friends. 

3. We believe in you because you believe in young men. 
And you can not have too much faith in them. You never 
spoke truer words than in the chapel last November, when 
referring to your own college days, you said that your 
heart then would answer to direct, manly words as the 
wax answers to the seal. A vivid revelation of the college 



64 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

boy ! An instinctive discerner of character, a hater of 
shams and disguises, sensitive to fairness, and honor and 
truth, — nowhere is there nobler possibiHty. I pity the 
man who can face this without a thrill of joy and fear, 
and the instinctive glance to the higher Wisdom. 

I am sure that you will treat young men with the sym- 
pathetic appreciation, with the unfailing trust, born of 
your own college life, and of the love and knowledge of 
your own boys. Hamilton loses all the peculiar advan- 
tages of its position, — far better that our sons go to the 
great University, ^if there is not a personal, sympathetic 
interest in each student, if every boy does not come into 
touch with some wise and strong friend among his in- 
structors. The College has lost its opportunity if its first, 
close contact with the student is the sharp stroke of dis- 
cipline. In the exercise of needed authority, in the dis- 
cipline essential to mental and moral health, in the 
machinery that regulates the working of so many interests, 
— all the more need for the infusion of a great, warm, 
generous personality. May you feel with the Arnolds and 
Taylors and Hopkinses the possibility and the sacredness 
of the humblest student. I can express no better wish 
than that you may win the respect, the confidence, — yes, 
far more — the reverence of young men. 

4. We believe in you because you believe in the Chris- 
tian teacher. You have struck the true note in speaking 
of yourself as the preacher and pastor as well as the exec- 
utive of the college. The * ' Lux et Veritas" of our seal 
shines on the page of God's word. We may depend upon 
your effort to strengthen every moral and spiritual force of 
the college life, — the elements of true manhood. And 
only this spirit can save the college as it follows the path 
of material progress. Only the clear vision of spiritual 
things can keep the American college from repeating the 
truth of the old classic fable of the man buried deep under 
the mountain. 

The men of the past toiled in faith. Kirkland you have 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 6$ 

told US came from Albany on snow-shoes. I have heard 
Henry Kendall say that he walked to college barefooted, 
holding his shoes in hand as a matter of economy. Sen- 
ator Hawley walked to college over the hills, and boarded 
on 97 cents a week. Great professors lived here simple 
self-denying lives. 

It was the heroic element, — not peculiar method or ex- 
cellence of instruction — but the heroic element that made 
men and sent the sons of Hamilton on paths of service and 
honor the world around. 

The college will grow. Stately buildings may crown 
the hill and homes of elegance rest upon its slopes. In 
all the changes of progress, may the simple, self-denying, 
heroic spirit of the past never forsake its professors or 
students. May snobbery never lay its dwarfing hand upon 
men or manners. May the time never come when ' ' the 
wealthiest man among them is the best;" when the son of 
promise, however poor his dress or obscure his home, shall 
fail of. welcome and honor. 

*'My boy shall go to the 7nan, not the college," said an 
eminent Hamilton graduate the other day. It is the truth 
seen to-day, — and I trust to be no less visible in all coming 
years — that t/ie man makes the college. 

Thus, Mr. President, classmate and friend, I bring to 
you and thro you to the college, the greetings of the 
alumni and friends of Hamilton. Let us all join in saying : 

" Our dear mother has her sons again, 

Reborn to filial purpose. . . " 

We believe " The cold, unsunny days 

Of watching gone !" 
" The buds shall bursting blossoms be 

And blossoms fruit, in the new century." 



Response for the Students. 

BY SENIOR CHARLES R. LA RUE. 

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, Ladies 
and Gentlemen: 

IT is my privilege to respond on this occasion in behalf 
of the undergraduates. In their name I extend to Presi- 
dent Stryker the most cordial welcome in our power. We 
receive him back to the scenes of his college days, to sit in 
the highest place of honor in our community of learning. 
We receive him, not as a stranger, but as a son of the same 
mother, the first of those reared within these walls to hold 
the college presidency. During his first few weeks among 
us, we have learned to know and appreciate him, and he 
may rely upon our our hearty support. He has said that 
when he came "he burned the bridges behind him," and 
we trust that his enthusiasm and devotion will lead the 
way to new victories. 

This is an auspicious day for our college. It seems to 
be one of those spring-times of collegiate existence, in 
which all life moves fuller and faster. Our alumni have 
become suddenly more loyal, our endowments are increas- 
ing, and the trustees have given us the best endowment of 
all in President Stryker. The time is full of promise and 
of hope. We pledge our endeavors for future victories in 
every department of college life. We boast of past suc- 
cess upon the base-ball and foot-ball fields. Three times 
in the last four years we have won the pennant in general 
athletics. 

Now, with the new Soper Gymnasium we hope to ac- 
complish more, and we believe that the spirit among the 
students will hold athletics upon so high a plane that they 
will bring honor to the college and never reproach. 

We believe that faculty and students have a common 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 6/ 

cause and we advocate all means that may promote mutual 
confidence. If more could be made of the College Senate 
in which common matters are considered, great good would 
result. If more power were entrusted to it, its usefulness 
would certainly increase. 

We, of the four classes, altho but undergraduates, feel 
upon our shoulders no small responsibility for the fair fame 
of our college. The world must know Hamilton in part at 
least thro its students. We who are now receiving training 
will soon become alumni. Foundations are being laid for 
our loyalty, and we trust to enable us to win honor for our- 
selves and for our alma mater. May we feel the responsi- 
bility. May we strive to attain the end. May faculty and 
students, and trustees and alumni, unite all their purposes 
and their toils to promote the truest welfare and to advance 
the widest influence of "Old Hamilton!" 



TME EVENING BANQUET IN UTICA. 

AFTER the close of the exercises in the Stone Church 
a special train from Clinton brought down to Utica 
a large number of guests for the annual banquet, at the 
Butterfield House, of the Central New York Association of 
Hamilton Alumni. 

It was an occasion of historical significance, hearty 
enthusiasm and fraternal enjoyment. 

Dr. Charles T. Olmsted, of Utica, asked a blessing on 
the feast. Hon. William M. White, '54, presided and 
appointed the committee to nominate new officers for the 
coming year. The nominations made by this committee 
were adopted, viz: 

President, Hon. Milton H. Merwin, '52, Utica; Vice 
President, Charles L. Stone, '71, Syracuse; Secretary, | 
Theodore L. Cross, '81; Treasurer, Lotus N. Southworth, 
'79; Executive Committee, John H. Cunningham, '66^ 
Charles H. Searle, '69, Emmett J. Ball, '74, Prof. George 
Griffith, 'yy, Dr. Fayette H. Peck, '79, Albert R. Kessinger, 
'88. 

Acting as Toast Master, President White spoke as fol- 
lows: 

Gentlemen of the Alumni — My associations with 
Hamilton College go back a good way. My father was a 
student there over 70 years ago, and boarded with Dr. 
Noyes where the Chi Psi Chapter House now stands. 
There is a grapevine now growing that he planted on the 
grounds, and it bears the Clinton grape. 

Two generations of my family have to thank the founder 
of Hamilton College for knowledge and understanding. I 
have hoped, and still hope, that some of my sons will be 
graduates of the same alma mater. 

There is something about this Hamilton College which 
makes her sons love her with a peculiar love — an individu- 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 69 

ality, a personality, a reality, which can only come, per- 
haps, from her being what is called a small college — where 
you know the president, v/here you are acquainted with 
the professors, and are taught by them — having the influ- 
ence of their characters and the atmosphere of their cul- 
ture and their daily lives thrown about you. You are not 
relegated to tutors for the first two years of your college 
life. 

The number of students is not so large but that you 
may know personally all your classmates and be on speak- 
ing terms with the upper class men ! You all become as 
one family and have a home feeling and a fellow interest. 
You are apart by yourselves; a little colony, all busy and 
bent on one duty, one interest — self-development, self 
culture, study — making useful men of yourselves, and the 
faculty are helping you all they can. These are some 
reasons why the alumni of Hamilton College love their 
alma mater. 

These are privileges that the university cannot give, that 
the large colleges cannot offer, that the city absolutely fails 
to provide. 

Education comes from surroundings as well as from 
books. The surroundings give polish — finish — culture and 
address, while books and study give brain power and the 
ability to use the intellect in the affairs of life. Combined, 
they make the successful man, the useful man, the man of 
affairs — the American. Some one has said that the Amer- 
ican was the Englishman civilized, the German civilized, 
the Frenchman civilized — in fact the cosmopolitan. 

The atmosphere of our alma mate}" is a Christian 
atmosphere. Morality is approved of all men. The high- 
est, purest school of morality is Christianity. The phi- 
losophy of Christ's teachings has always been, and is yet, 
peculiarly a characteristic of the presidents and faculty of 
Hamilton College. They have lived lives of faith, dili- 
gence and self-devotion. 



TO HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

And the sons of Hamilton bear witness ''That these 
things are so." 

To-day is Thanksgiving day for us ; a real old-fashioned 
genuine New England Thanksgiving — hearty and heartfelt. 
We are just returned from the inauguration of the ninth 
president of our alma mater, one of her own sons. 
In the vigor of early manhood, in the prime of life, with 
his powers developed, his character established — who, from 
this same love I have been telling of, heard the voice of 
his mother and at her call gave up the duties, the pros- 
pects, the natural ambition of any man, the surroundings 
that allure, the activities that stimulate, the publicity of a 
great city and the possibilities of a city pastor, and, turn- 
ing to that mother, said, * * Mother, I hear you ; you want 
me ; I come. Whatever there is in me, whatever I can 
do, my life, my strength, whatever powers God has given 
me, are yours to command. Mother, I come." 

Gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing to you 
the Rev. Dr. Stryker, who will speak upon ''Quality." 

President Stryker was received with applause. He said: 

I think this is the most patient crowd I ever saw. 
Nothing but phenomenal endurance would tolerate one 
thing all day long. If there is anything I am tired of 
it is hearing of the President of Hamilton College. I 
made a few remarks at Clinton this afternoon. [Applause.] 
I am asked to-night to say a few words about quality. I 
have nothing new to add. Quality, first and last, is the meas- 
ure of worth. The measure of the power of the college we 
love must be judged not b}^ its size, but by its spirit. 
What we want of Hamilton College is to have its best just 
a little better than the best of every other college. ' ' The 
good is the enemy of the best ; " that is to say, that which 
is merely 'good enough' stands in opposition to the highest per- 
fection. The man who is content just to get thro will never 
have a high ideal. Whatever else we have, in the blessing 
of God, we must have quality. I picture to myself "a 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STKYKER. 7 1 

right little, tight little" college, having about 300 students, 25 
or 30 professors, and graduating from 50 to 60 annually 
from the Senior Class. I could picture to myself no higher 
or greater delight than to see Hamilton just such a 
college. Not with 1,000 men doing all kinds of things in 
all kinds of ways, but with 200 or 300 men doing the very 
thing they ought to do in the best possible way. When I 
spoke to our Hamilton men at Chicago, I found great 
comfort for them in considering the history of Princeton 
College. From 1747 to 1830 the faculty of Princeton 
did not average three men, and as late as i860, it had 
but eight men. If Princeton College, as it was, lived 
at a dying rate till i860, we can wait just a little 
longer for the windows of heaven to open and for Hamilton 
College to have all she needs and perhaps all she wants. 
I believe Hamilton College is coming to her own, and that 
from every son on whom she has a claim. We want to 
feel that all thro Central New York, especially, every 
rose-pink baby boy who is born, wears our college color, 
and is predestined to enter Hamilton College. [Applause.] 

Dr. Horace B. Silliman, of Cohoes, was greeted with the 
college cheer, and spoke upon 

THE TRUSTEES, AND THE SMALL COLLEGE. 

In reference to the first part of the subject assigned to 
me, ''The Trustees." I can only repeat what I have said 
many times before on similar occasions, that the trustees 
have been faithful to the trust committed to them, and 
have striven to do the best they could with the limited 
means at their disposal. For several years past the pros- 
pect has been brightening, and the future is now full of 
promise. The alumni and friends of the college have been 
liberal in supplying what was needed in physical appoint- 
ments, and to some extent in furnishing means for enlarge- 
ment and improvement. The enthusiastic interest which 
has been generally manifested has encouraged the trustees 



72 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

to bold and aggressive action in enlarging the faculty and 
affording greatly increased facilities for larger and better 
work, believing that what has been so urgently demanded 
will be liberally sustained. 

Their crowning success has been in inducing Dr. Stryker 
to accept the presidency, and their estimate of his preemi- 
nent fitness for the position has been confirmed by universal 
and hearty expressions of approval and satisfaction. As to 
the *' Small College" part of the subject, I think that after 
the two magnificent delineations of its advantages this 
afternoon, so well supplemented by the presiding officer of 
this occasion, it would be a thankless task for me to speak 
further on the theme. But I would ask, when is a college 
small ? Measured by their area in square miles, or the 
number of their resident inhabitants, some of the States of 
our union would be small. But when you count the mil- 
lions of western acres of which they hold the title deeds, 
and number the throbs of those industries which they 
control, and which shake every State in the union, and 
above all when you enumerate the many thousands of their 
sons, whose heart strings, stretched but not broken, bind 
them to the parental houses, you learn how large the little 
States are. So with the college — so with Hamilton ! 
Measured by her material wealth, counted by her under- 
graduates, she IS a small college. But when you number 
those in every State, and almost every country, who still 
call her mother; when you tell the story of their achieve- 
ment, in every vocation where honor is won, and truth 
illustrated; when you measure the influence of Hamilton, 
Is she a small college ? 

The future of the college, and whether in the future she 
shall be small or great, not only in numbers, but in the ex- 
tent and quality of her influence, depends entirely upon the 
practical interest which her sons, and other friends of a 
thoro scholastic and Christian education, take in her 
welfare. 

The speaker closed with an allusion to the chimes of 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 73 

Amsterdam, and their effect upon the inhabitants of that 
city, while the man who made the music did not hear it, 
but sat at the keyboard doing his duty skillfully and faith- 
fully. So the teachings of Hamilton are heard and felt 
thro the country and the world. Thus it has been, 
thus we believe it will be. We have placed this day at 
the keyboard one who has a strong heart and a firm hand, 
but a loving heart and a tender and a skillful touch to lead 
and guide, yet;_with full recognition of and dependence on 
the source of all strength and wisdom. 

Rev. Dr. W. R. Terrett spoke for the Faculty : 
There is work to be done for Hamilton College where- 
ever there are those who love her. But all this work is 
founded on the assurance that there is on the top of Ham- 
ilton Hill a company of earnest men who are endeavoring 
to develop broad. Christian manhood in those who are en- 
trusted to their care. It is for these men, the faculty of 
the college, that I am to speak this evening. We under- 
stand that you expect us to endeavor to cultivate broad 
Christian manhood in the students whom we are called 
upon to teach. You believe that culture should be broad, 
— you believe that it should be Christian. You believe 
that the purpose of culture should be to develop manhood, 
not merely scholarship, but manhood. The faculty of the 
college desires to assure you and the public that a sound, 
thoro satisfactory college education can be obtained at 
Hamilton to-day. It is commonly said now that Hamilton 
is a hard college to get thro. We are proud of that 
reputation. We believe that it it is deserved. 

The faculty of the college is not devoured by a desire to 
have its salaries raised. We shall not object ! We 
thank President Stryker for what he said to-day in our be- 
half. But there are other things which we desire more. 
Give us more books in the library, an endowed librarian- 
ship, more apparatus, a chemical, biological and physical 
laboratory, an assistant professor of biology, a new pro- 
fessor of political economy ; give us these things and we 



74 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

shall be able to endure a little longer ' ' the plain living and 
high thinking " to which we are accustomed on College 
Hill. 

I speak for the faculty in extending a hearty welcome 
to President Stryker. We promise him our cordial co- 
operation. We shall offer him no end of good advice, He 
has invited criticism, we shall accept the invitation. But 
we unite in believing that there should be conferred upon 
the President of Hamilton College a larger degree of real, 
substantial and ultimate authority than he has enjoyed 
heretofore. 

We look forward with hopeful confidence to the future 
of the college. She has seen dark times, but brighter days 
are dawning. We believe that her future will be worthy 
of her traditions of her past. We cannot all call her fair 
mother, but we can all call her fair mistress and devote to 
her with cheerful consecration the labor of our lives. 

The fervent word sand pithy illustrations of Dr. Terrett's 
brief but brilliant speech, of which the above is but an out- 
line, were received with unbounded enthusiasm. 

Hon. Elihu Root, '64, of New York, in words of intense 
and often pathetic earnestness responded for ' ' The Bar 
and the Busy World." After a winning introduction, spoke 
substantially as follows : 

I am to speak to this toast as an alumnus of Hamilton 
College. The bar — the word has different meanings to 
different men. To the under-graduate it means a location, 
and a low one ! To the average laymen it means a body 
of men who, having the opportunity to levy tribute on the 
busy world, improve it ! But to an alumnus of Hamilton 
College, with the history of her graduates in mind, it means, 
what it meant to Erskine; a body of men whose duty it is to 
defend the right and attack the wrong ; to ascertain the 
truth ; to assert the fundamental principles of human right, 
standing for the weak and defenseless, undaunted by de- 
feat ; ever maintaining the right, ever seeking the truth. 
For that bar I do not hesitate to say that the training 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 75 

which Hamilton College gives is unsurpassed by the train- 
ing of any institution in this broad land. Every faculty 
which is necessary to the successful lawyer, is born and 
stimulated by the simple, hard, faithful life one lives at this 
college. I congratulate President Stryker that he has been 
inaugurated president of this college. I believe the sur- 
roundings and climate tend to make strong and vigorous 
men. The seclusion of the college and the close relations 
which the students have with the faculty, tend to lay the 
foundation for all that is necessary for the successful 
lawyer. I remember seeing on the commencement stage 
of Hamilton College, Joshua Spencer ; I remember that 
Hiram Denio and Horatio Seymour were connected with 
Hamilton. There is no higher pride in life to me when asked : 
' * Whence came you .''" than to say I came from the county 
which gave to the world such members of the bar as Henry 
R. Storrs, Greene C. Bronson, Joshua Spencer, Hiram 
Denio, Horatio Seymour, Francis Kernan and Roscoe 
Conkling. [Applause.] I sometimes doubt whether the 
county fully realizes how much she owes to these men. I 
love Hamilton College not simply as an alumnus, but as a 
man of Central New York. I look from my city home to 
these hills where my fathers dwelt. I look back to the 
grand old county of Oneida and say that the locality and 
Hamilton College are to me one and the same thing. 

" The shell lost on the mountain height 

Sings ever of the sea, 
And so my heart tho leagues away 

Sings, O my home ! — 

Sings, O my home, of thee." 

* ' The Church will do its Share, " was the toast assigned 
to the Rev. Eben B. Cobb, '75, of Elizabeth, N. J. : 

"What shall I say.?" said a somev^-hat aged, long- 
winded, and prosy dominie as, with a look of dreadful 
solemnity and anxiet}^ upon his face, he rose to speak to 
some children in connection with a Christmas anniversary 
—'•What shall I say ? What s/iall I say r And a little 



76 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

fellow in the back of the room, answered : ' ' Mister, mis- 
ter, say Amen." 

I am sure that, at this hour in the evening and after all 
which we have been permitted to enjoy this day, most of 
you would prefer that, at this point, I should say Amen. 

You have had enough — and where fatigue begins pleasure 
and profit cease. I promise you, therefore, that I will say 
— Amen — quite shortly ; for, in addition to what I have 
just remarked, there is a beatitude, which I learned a 
number of years ago, which has served me many a good 
turn since, and which was, ' ' Blessed is the man who mak- 
eth a short speech, he shall be invited to speak again." 

There is one thing, however, which is on my mind to 
which I am constrained to give utterance. And possibly 
I may best enable you to understand what it is by giving 
you a somewhat homely incident which I noted a short 
time since. I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of the 
story. I can only say that it illustrates my point. 

A ranchman, living in the vicinity of the Rocky Mount- 
ains, entrapped, upon one occasion, an eagle which he took 
to his home intending to keep and to tame it. To this end, 
fastening it by a rope to a post in the door yard and giving 
it food and drink, he left it to itself. When the bird, hav- 
ing repeatedly tried to escape by flight, and having as 
repeatedly failed, went to the end of the rope, and with 
head bowed and spirit apparently broken, began to walk 
round and round and round the post till, actually, it 
grooved for itself a rut in the earth in which it continued 
to press'- forward unceasingly. At last the sympathy of the 
ranchman was aroused, and untying the rope from the leg 
of the bird, he gave it a chance to be free. But instead of 
improving its opportunity the bird continued in its monot- 
onous way, on and on, in its rut. Till, perceiving what 
was needed, a servant of the ranchman, a mere lad, gave 
to the bird a push, which forced it out of its rut, caused it 
to flap itS' wings and to lift up its head. And the eagle 
thus being made aware of its strength and catching sight, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 7/ 

once more, of its native air, spread its wings and was soon 
lost to sight amid the crags of the neighboring mountains. 

God forbid that I should say that ' * our dear old mother 
on the hill " who, during the years which have gone — and 
at no time more truly than in the recent past — has been 
sending forth into the world the men which Hamilton has 
been sending forth, has been ' ' moving in a rut " — that 
*'she has fallen behind in the race" — "missed her oppor- 
tunity," &c. , &c. But what I would say is, that standing 
at a point in her history where she is ready to soar aloft to 
nobler and better things, our college needs a boost which 
will make her feel her strength and which will cause her 
to lift up her head till she catches a clear and steady view 
of the eminence which she ought to occup5^ And I mean, 
further, that that boost ought now to come not merely 
from the great men, the millionaires, the men of national 
reputation and the like: but from the ordinary men — the 
ordinary preacher, lawyer, doctor, teacher, journalist, 
merchant, farmer, &c. , each one volunteering his services, 
not standing ' 'all the day idle because no one has hired 
him;" each one working "at his own charges;" each one 
toiling ' ' over against his own house; " each one doing what 
he best can; and all together laboring with mind, heart 
and hand for the advancement of the one institution to 
which we are bound by a common and growing love. 

We have had an inspiring experience to-day. The in- 
augural address of President Stryker was a masterpiece, 
and the speeches which preceded and followed it, and 
those to which we have listened this evening, have been 
superlatively excellent, every one of them. But are these 
magnificent addresses to fall upon unresponsive ears } Is 
the enthusiasm of this hour to subside into disappointing 
nothingness ? Or are we to take to-day the first step in an 
upward progress like that of which we have sometimes 
dreamed might come to our college ? Brethren of the 
alumni, the answer to this question is with us, and, to a 
large extent, with the average men among us. Are we 



78 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

willing to help, and for how much ? I do not mean, how 
much will we give in money ; but how much in honest, 
persistent, loyal, hard work. Money is not the first need 
of our college — tho every one knows that money cannot 
be despised. It is enthusiasm, esprit-dii-corpSy an intense 
flaming, undying and, above all, working love on the part 
of every alumnus for his alma mater, which is impera- 
tively needed. Let the college have that and all else, 
money, equipment, students, friends, influence, will be 
added unto her. 

And to this end, suffer one or two practical sugges- 
tions. We have a goodly number of alumni here to-night ; 
but they are not all we have. Would it not contribute to the 
development of the enthusiasm of which I speak if each one 
here present, having selected some one who is not now with 
us, would write that absent one a personal letter telling of 
the grand day we have had and of our hopes for the future 
of the college on the hill } A report of the inauguration 
will doubtless appear in the public press, and a copy of 
President Stryker's address and the other speeches is to be 
sent, I understand, to every alumnus ; but these, while in- 
valuable, cannot take the place of a personal letter. And 
if you will write two or ten such letters, so much the bet- 
ter. Then speak enthusiastically of Hamilton to every one 
you meet. Keep your eyes open for new students and 
other ways to help. " Despise not the day of small things." 
Think of the college. Pray for it. Live for it. And high 
tide will come. 

And, in this connection, why might it not be a good 
thing for the secretaries of the graduate classes to engage in 
a special work toward deepening the interest each in his 
own class. There are various chairs in our college which 
need to be more adequately endowed. Why can not this 
work be taken up by the individual classes } For my part, 
I believe it can be. 

At all events let us try, every man of us. And as the 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 79 

topic assigned to me — reads, * ' The Church will do its share. " 
I reply, she will. Every time and all the time. 

One word more: A young girl meeting me on the street 
the other day, said, ' ' Mr. Cobb, what is the largest room 
in the world." "Oh, I know," I replied; for I had just 
seen a statement upon the subject in one of the daily 
papers. But when I began to speak, quite learnedly, the 
child interrupted me by saying — " You are wrong. " ' 'Well, 
then, " I asked, ' ' What is the largest room in the world ?" 
And she, with a merry twinkle in her eye, responded — 
" The room for improvement." 

I am glad that those nearest to College Hill have started 
a project to keep the alumni informed as to college news. 
Facts are the fuel of enthusiasm. And no zeal will long 
continue which is not according to knowledge. I rejoice, 
I repeat, in this project and am ready to give to it all the 
assistance which I am able. But is there not room for im- 
provement even here ? Would it not be well to have a 
committee at college, or at least some responsible person 
in this vicinity whose duty it should be to send almost con- 
stantly to the metropolitan journals, and indeed to as many 
journals as possible, items of college news. Keep the col- 
lege before the public. Keep it there as a college in which 
those interested in it have hope. And President Stryker, 
(long may he live !) will find behind him an irresistible army 
which will enable him to accomplish the exalted work 
which he is so eager at this moment to perform. Amen. 

Hon. James S. Sherman, ''j'^, then responded to the 
question, '* Hamilton College — Where is it at?'' 

The careless expression of a provincialism, by a public 
man, in a public place, under the excitement of badgering 
cross-questioning, and the stimulus of a free use of beef 
tea, made from beef from which the horns had not been 
removed ; or as some assert by the stimulus derived from 
extracting the juice from the kernels on the outside side 
of the cob in general, in putting on the inside of this par- 
ticular Cobb, was quickly caught up by an observant and 



80 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

critical public, and became the by-word of a continent. It 
was spoken carelessly at first, — it is so spoken now, — most 
by-words are so spoken. But that one little expression is 
full of meaning. I prefer to think it was linked with the 
name of Hamilton College to be spoken of, not as a by- 
word, but as a thoughtful expression, " Where am I at. ^" 
What does that mean to each of us. How shall we 
answer that question. Upon the answer from us each 
morally, mentally, physically, financially depends our 
future happiness in this and the other world. This is the 
question that from the pulpit each Sunday we are asked 
to answer to ourselves. It is the question to which we 
ask an answer from our medical adviser when an ailment 
overtakes us. It is the question the banker, the business 
man asks us to answer to him when credit is desired. Let 
us then in its full, its serious meaning apply it to-night to 
Hamilton College. Where is our alma mater at } Where 
has she been at } Where should she be at } Of her past 
no need to speak. That is made, it is glorious, and it is 
safe. It stimulates the present and gives hope for the 
future. At the first meeting of the Central New York 
Alumni Association, I expressed as my idea of the future 
of the college, that it would not reach the position we 
have all desired for her until one of her own sons occupied 
her executive chair, and her Board of Trust should contain 
a generous sprinkling of her younger alumni. I thought 
so then and think so now. The one condition is met by 
the election of Mr. Dunham, Mr. Stone, Mr. Tompkins and 
Mr. Root, trustees. The other, by the action of the board 
in the choice of President Stryker, which has been fully 
and finally consummated to-day. We are on the right 
track now. The goal so long wished for by us all is within 
reach for the college. The brightness of the present lights 
up our pathway to the future. Guided by that light, and 
with the devotion we as loyal sons owe to our college 
mother, it is possible for us to press the college on to that 
goal. Our devotion points out our duty, which should be, 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 8 1 

is, our pleasure as well. Many hands make light work. 
Let us then, united in desire, in purpose, united in action, 
like brave loyal soldiers, fall into line behind our new, our 
splendid leader, nor let our energy or our zeal lag, until 
we have placed upon the highest plane of honor and use- 
fulness, the dear old college we love. Where Hamilton 
College is then '' at," we shall have no need to answer, she 
will give answer herself ! 

''The Loyal Alumnus" was responded to by John W. 
O'Brien, '73» of Auburn: 

I am called up suddenly here as a substitute. I am 
asked to take the place of Jack Goss and respond to his 
toast. He would be a brave man who would attempt to 
fill his place on such an occasion and such a theme. I 
would that he himself were here to show you the very type 
and embodiment of the loyal alumnus. 

We are glad that we have at last an alumnus, and a 
young one, as president of the college. To be sure we men 
of '73 never supposed that the trustees would go to the 
class of '72 for a college president. That did not seem 
within the possibilities. It certainly seemed to us a 
strange place to go to look for a good man. But after all, 
this matter of goodness is comparative. You remember 
how Mr. Casey expressed it. He was passing Mrs. Hooli- 
gan's house and saw it decorated as for some event, and so 
said "Good morning, Mrs. Hooligan, and what is all this 
for.?" ''Oh, my bye Danny is coming home the day." "I 
thought it was for five years he was sint up." "So it was, 
but he got wan year aff for good behaviour." "Oh, Mrs. 
Hooligan, it must make you proud to have so good a bye.'' 
Perhaps it is upon that basis that '72 may be proud. 
Nevertheless if her boy turn out as good as he promises to, 
we are willing to forgive to '72 her past "orneryness" and 
welcome her son with hearty sympathy. 

I was at another inauguration of another young college 
president the other day. I went down to Cornell Univer- 

F 



82 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

sity and saw the brilliant young scholar, Jacob Gould 
Schurman, inducted into office. I heard the address in 
which he outlined the policy of the university and pressed 
its claims. Why, he wanted sixty thousand dollars a year 
for the veterinary department alone ! He proposed to 
teach six or seven different kinds of horse-doctoring there. 
Like Atlas, he would bear on his shoulders the whole round 
globe of education. At Cornell they would study every- 
thing from the rutabaga to the Rig- Veda. It was splen- 
did. They talked of millions there as unconcernedly as we 
do of thousands. But with all that Cornell had of promise, 
there was one notable lack at these proceedings. It was 
that of alumni. Those its money could not buy. When 
we look at that aspect of the case it is they who are in the 
bud, and we who are in the flower. We have the high 
traditions and have a band of alumni devoted to them. 
Great equipment that she has, Cornell has not and can- 
not have for years to come what is within our power 
to-day. But we must be loyal. It moves me to indig- 
nation when I hear our alumni speaking in terms of dis- 
paragement of our alma mater. Why should we ever utter 
derogation } Why should we show less than faithful love 
to the only mother we alumni have .-* Let us protect, cher- 
ish, honor her. Her lack may be our fault — it is not hers. 
When has she forgotten her children } It is so much cheaper 
to criticise than to construct. Let us give, frank and 
whole, our homage with our help ! Let us cheerfully and 
manfully take up the burden of her future t If we do our 
duty we shall hear the praises of Hamilton College sung 
from one end of this broad land to the other. We are 
starting upon a new and splendid level. Let us here and now 
resolve that no one shall ever hear from us one word of 
disparagement, but that we will stand shoulder to shoulder 
for the welfare of the college on the hill. 

A motion pledging loyalty to Hamilton College was 
carried with acclaim, and at 11:45 ^he society adjourned. 
The reunion had been an uplift and a prophecy. 



Letters from Invited Guests. 

Hundreds of letters were received by Dr. Hudson from 
distant alumni and friends, which indicate a renewed in- 
terest in the college and faith in its future. Room can be 
found for words of good cheer from only a few of these 
letters : 

From Hon. Truman P. Handy, Cleveland, O. : 

It would give me great pleasure to be present at the 
inaugural of President Stryker, did not the distance and 
season of the year forbid. I regard the college as quite 
fortunate in securing the services of one so well qualified 
for the presidency as Dr. Stryker. His inauguration 
would especially interest me from the fact that I was 
present when a little boy, with my grandfather, at the 
inauguration of your first president, Rev. Dr. Azel Backus. 
We marched around the village square, and from that time 
I became a friend of Hamilton College. I regret that I 
had not the opportunity to share in its honors. 

From Rev. Albert Worthington, '27, Ambler, Pa. : 

I should be much gratified could I be present at the 
inauguration of President Stryker. I am now in my 89th 
year, the only survivor of the class of 1827. My only son, 
Albert P. Worthington, long since deceased, was also a 
graduate in the class of 1864. Dr. Henry Davis was the 
president when I was in college. Two of my classmates. 
Rev. Sheldon Dibble and Rev. Grover Comstock, were 
foreign missionaries. I am glad you have called such a 
worthy man for your president. May God send prosperity. 

From Hon. James O. Putnam, Buffalo, formerly American 
minister at Brussels : 

I am not one of Hamilton's graduates, but I have a 
pleasant memory of my two years' connection with the 
college. That was long, long ago, almost three score 
years. I congratulate the trustees upon the happy auspices 
that will accompany the inauguration of its new president, 
who by all the testimony I have seen brings high qualifica- 
tion for the office. 



84 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

From Miss Grace Denio Litchfield, daughter of the late 
Hon. Edwin C. Litchfield, class of 1831 : 

I regret extremely that I shall not be able to be present 
at the inauguration of Dr. Stryker to the presidency of 
Hamilton College. It would have given me more than 
pleasure to witness the ceremony which is to install one of 
my oldest and most valued friends as head of a college en- 
deared to me for always for my father's sake. 

From Right Rev. Theodore Benedict Lyman, D. D., D. 
C. L. , '37, Bishop of North Carolina : 

While my engagements render it impossible for me to be 
present, permit me to congratulate you that one so highly 
esteemed has been secured for this important office. I 
trust that under his guidance the dear old college may rap- 
idly advance to the highest degree of prosperity. 

From Rev. Dr. Henry A. Nelson, '40, Editor of The 
Church at Home and Abroad, Philadelphia, Pa. : 

I very heartily join in all the congratulations on the oc- 
casion of Dr. Stryker's inauguration. I wrote to Dr. 
North on hearing of the election, expressing hearty ap- 
proval and joy. My satisfaction has steadily increased 
with reflection. All that I have seen from the steady and 
facile pen of Dr. Stryker since his election has increased 
my assurance (very strong from the first) that the choice 
was wise for us and that his acceptance was wise in him. 
I greatly rejoice in the fact that alma mater is to have one 
of her own alumni in that high office. The love of a son 
is no mean qualification for the guidance of a mother. 
Dr. Stryker brings back to College hill maturity, experi- 
ence, reputation, and yet comes in the freshness of early 
manhood, with large and rich "expectation of life" before 
him. I confidently expect him to be enrolled hereafter 
with the eminent college presidents — such as Wayland, 
Nott and Mark Hopkins — who began their presidency 
early enough to attain their highest distinction in it, and 
with time to accomplish a great work. As now one of the 
elder alumni, I heartily welcome one of the younger — not 
a year too young — to that great opportunity. God bless 
him and make him and alma mater a blessing to the 
twentieth century annorum domint, and the second century 
annorum almae matris. 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 85' 

From Rev. Dr. N. G. Clark, Boston, Secretary A. B. C. 
F. M.: 

I am glad to be remembered on so happy an occasion as 
the inauguration of Dr. Stryker as the president of Hamil- 
ton College. My personal acquaintance with different 
gentlemen connecten with the college in time past, and 
especially my obligations to the institution for a number of 
choice men who have gone out into the foreign mission 
field, have given me a lively interest in the welfare and 
success of the college. I shall anticipate the continuance 
of the prosperity of former years. 

From Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings, '48, President of 
Union Theological Seminary: 

I can not allow the occasion to pass without expressing 
my deep interest in the college, and my great joy at the 
prospects which the very judicious selection of a new presi- 
dent opened before my abna mater. Dr. Stryker will win 
his way, it seems to me, wherever he goes. My hope and' 
prayers are that his administration may mark a new era 
of prosperity for the institution which we all love. 

From Rev. George C. Curtis, D. D., Rochester: 

I congratulate the college on the choice it has made of 
a president. I should be happy to meet him, having had 
that privilege but few times since I gave the charge to him 
when he was installed pastor of the Presbyterian church 
in Ithaca, years ago. My best wishes to all, the college, 
its faculty and board of trustees. 

From Rev. Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, President of 
Armour Institute, Chicago: 

Working here in the half-completed basement of the 
Armour Institute, I send to you the glad congratulations and 
earnest prayers of this young educational institution, and 
we implore the blessings of heaven upon the revered head 
of Hamilton College. Our paths have diverged a little, 
but I am sure we will be in sight of one another, and that 
you will be glad to hear of the success for which we pray 
in our less conspicuous work in furnishing the world with 
educated men and women. 



S6 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

From Dr. John H. Peck, '59, President of Rensselaer Poly- 
technic Institute: 

With all the loyal sons of Hamilton College, I rejoice 
in an occasion so full of promise for its future, and were it 
possible, I should be glad to testify by my presence, my 
pride and pleasure in everything that promotes the wel- 
fare of my alma mater. 

From Rev. Dr. Mattoon M. Curtis, Professor of Philos- 
ophy in Adelbert College, Cleveland, O. : 

While I regret exceedingly that my duties will not allow 
me to be present at the inauguration of Dr. Stryker, I 
wish to congratulate most heartily the board and the college 
that one of such marked ability and enterprise is to cham- 
pion the interests of dear alma "tnater. I am sure that 
the prospects of the college, brightened as they are by the 
choice of Dr. Stryker, are a profound gratification to her 
alumni. 

From Rev. Albert J. Abeel, '83, Syracuse: 

Old Hamilton and her new president have my loyalty 
and my prayer. May the God of wisdom bless them both; 
and may God's millionaires overlay that ark of learning 
with silver and gold inside and out. 

From Rev. Charles Park, 'S^, Astoria, Long Island: 

I thank you for the invitation, and hope for the new 
president that the scholarship of his first name and the 
vigor of his last may bring a happy new year to Hanilton 
and to the first filial administration in her history. 

From Rev. Edward Huntting Rudd, Albion: 

* ' No thoughtful student of history, and especially of the 
history of the valiant services rendered in the cause of 
truth, by our grand old Presbyterian Church, can cherish 
aught but feelings of gratitude, pride and hope as he dwells 
on Hamilton's splendid past ; as he watches the activity, 
loyalty and wisdom revealed in her present, and more than 
all, as with revived faith he looks into the future, which is 
so bright with hope and filled with promise. But the sons 
and friends of Hamilton must show their works as well as 
their faith from now on, and as never before. If modify- 
ing the words of Carey of old, they will ' * attempt great 



INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT STRYKER. 8/ 

things for Hamilton," then they may ** expect great things 
from Hamilton." Why not ? 

At the front shall be placed, with this event, the accurate 
scholarship, the undaunted courage, the great throbbing 
heart of love of a Melancthon, (and may God grant that he 
may be a vital part of Hamilton's great reformation), the 
leadership and skill of a Woolsey, and, — forgive the seem- 
ing anti-climax — the man v^ho has proven that he can 
strike strong and v^ell aimed blows from the shoulder in 
the defence of truth, and of broad, progressive educational 
movements. Not Boston's slugger, but ' 'Chicago's beloved 
Stryker." If his constituency will stand with him, he can 
prove that there is much in a name, when a ' 'man'' is back 
of it. 

If I can help push or pull or lift, call on me. My own 
college diploma is signed by that * 'noblest Roman of them 
all, " McCosh, but I am proud of the Hamiltonian stock in my 
educational pedigree, for my grandfather, the Rev. George 
Robert Rudd loved Hamilton and went out from her walls 
with the class of 1823, and for his and her sake I'll work 
whenever I can. 

From Rev. Professor Francis Brown, D, D. , of Union 
Theological Seminary: 

There are few men, I presume, among those whose 
personal life is not organically connected with Hamilton 
College for whom the occasion would have more interest 
than it would for me. Any recollections of the college 
running back to student days, are inseparably bound up with 
the memory of one who gave it the best service of his ripest 
years, and who taught me by precept, and by example, to 
revere its past, to value its work in the present and to 
expect for it a future of more abundant usefulness and hon- 
or. It is a pleasure to me to believe that it was for his sake 
quite as much as for my own, that your board conferred 
upon me an honorary distinction which I prize, and which 
gives me a specific right to sympathetic interest in all your 
affairs. 

It has been a source of great satisfaction to me to meet 
in the last fourteen years, many students of theology who 
came to the Seminary with the influence of Hamilton Col- 
lege, and exhibited the sound scholarship and sterling char- 
acter promoted there. 



88 HAMILTON COLLEGE. 

On all accounts, and not less because of those in your 
own body and among the faculty whom I rejoice to con- 
sider as my-friends, and because of the pleasure which all must 
feel in welcoming a man of Dr. Styker's capacity, accom- 
plishments and force to the headship of the college, I 
should be most glad to attend the inauguration service. 
Pray accept my sincere regrets and my earnest prayers for 
the blessing of God upon the college under the new ad- 
ministration now opening so auspiciously. 

From Rev. Professor Cleland B. McAfee, Park College, 
Parkville, Mo. : 

There are some reasons why we of Park College have 
a right to special interest in the movements and advance- 
ments of Hamilton College. For a number of years our 
faculty has contained one or more men from that institu- 
tion. That they have made and held good standing needs 
no proof beyond the regularity with which their places 
have been re-supplied from your alumni roll when they 
were called from us to other places. Hamilton men have 
proved to be successes in every instance here. Whether 
it has been because they were bent on maintaining the 
reputation made by their predecessors, or because they 
were interested in the work they had undertaken, or be- 
cause their college development has been thoro beyond that 
which some men receive, need not be discussed. The third 
element has most certainly played large part in their uni- 
form success. 

Men who have come to us have cared more for strength 
than for show. They have gladly made the most of the 
necesarily limited equipment of a younger institution. 
They have been interested and interesting instructors. 

We have found religious strength in them. At least 
four have become elders in the church in which their 
students have had ruling vote. Their classes have seen 
them go with regret, and it would not be difficult to hear 
cordial words for each one who has been here. 

Dr. Stryker seems hardly to belong to you yet. We 
shall become used to his title after awhile, but ''President" 
does not look familiar in the papers now. Strength is 
transportable, when you transport a strong man, and you 
have complied with the condition in taking Dr. Stryker. 

L.of G. 



* 



TRUSTEES. 

® 

CHARLES C. KINGSLEY, A. M., Utica, 1867! 

Rev. L. MERRILL MILLER, D. D., Ogdensburg, 1869. 

PUBLIUS V. ROGERS, A. M., Utica, 1869. 

Rev. henry KENDALL, D. D., New York 1871. 

GILBERT MOLLISON, Esq., Oswego, 187 1. 

Hon. ELLIS H. ROBERTS, LL. D., Utica, 1872. 

Hon. GEORGE M. DIVEN, A. M., Elmira, 1874. 

*HoN. THEODORE W. DWIGHT, LL. D., New York,. .1875. 
Hon. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY, LL. D., Hartford, Conn, 1875. 
Pres. DAVID H. COCHRAN, Ph.D.,LL. D., Brooklyn, 1875. 

Rev. JAMES B. LEE, D. D., Franklinville, 1877. 

Prof. EDWARD NORTH, L. H. D., LL. D,, Clinton, .. 188 1. 
Hon. ELIHU ROOT, A. M., New York, 1883. 

CHARLES A. HAWLEY, A. M., Seneca Falls,. ..1884. 
Rev. THOMAS B. HUDSON, D. D., Clinton, 1884. 

HORACE B. SILLIMAN, LL. D., Cohoes, 1885. 

A. NORTON BROCKWAY, A. M., M. D., New York, 1885. 

Rev. T. RALSTON SMITH, D. D., Buffalo, 1886. 

Rev. GEORGE B. SPALDING, D. D., Syracuse, 1886. 

Hon. THEODORE M. POMEROY, LL. D., Auburn,. . .1886. 

TALCOTT H. CAMP, Esq., Watertown, 1890. 

CHARLES L. STONE, A. M., Syracuse, 1890- 

THOMAS D. CATLIN, A. M., Ottawa, III., 1890. 

GEORGE E. DUNHAM, A. M., Utica, 1891. 

HAMILTON B. TOMPKINS, A. M., New York,.. 1882. 

WILLIAM M. WHITE, A. M., Utica, 1892. 

Pres. M. WOOLSEY STRYKER, D. D., LL. D., Clinton, 1892. 

CHARLES H. SMYTH, Esq., Clinton, 1893. 



Rev. THOMAS B. HUDSON D. D., Secretary, (1885), and Treasurer 1886. 

Executive Committee, Messrs. STRYKER, ROGERS, ROBERTS, KINGS- 
LEY, SILLIMAN, HUDSON, NORTH, STONE. 
'*Deceased. 



FACULTY. 

Rev. MELANCTHON WOOLSEY STRYKER, D. D., LL D., 

President, 

Elected, 
walcott professor of the evidences of christianity, 

and of ethics, and pastor of the college church. - 1 89 2. 

Litchfield professor of astronomy, and director 
OF THE Litchfield observatory, 

EDWARD NORTH, L. H. D., LL. D., 
Edward-Robinson professor of the greek language 

AND greek LITEATURE, - - 1 843. 

Rev. OREN ROOT, D. D., 
Samuel-Fletcher-Pratt professor of mathematics, 

AND registrar OF THE FACULTY, - 1880. 

Rev. ABEL GROSVENOR HOPKINS, Ph. D., 
Benjamin-Bates professor of the latin language and 

latin literature, and dean of the faculty, - 1869. 

Rev. WILLIAM ROGERS TERRETT, D. D., 

Maynard-Knox professor of law, history, civil polity, 

AND political ECONOMY, - - 1 889. 

HERMAN CARL GEORGE BRANDT, A. M., 

professor of the GERMAN AND FRENCH LANGUAGES, 

AND PHILOLOGY, - - - 1 882. 

BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH, A. M., 
Upson professor elect of rhetoric and oratory, 1893. 

ALBRO DAVID MORRILL, A. M., M. S., 

ChILDS professor of agricultural CHEMISTRY, AND 

PROFESSOR OF GENERAL CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY, 1 89 1. 



'Names of the Faculty, except that of the President, are arranged according 
to seniority in gn"aduation. 



91 

Elected 



CLINTON SCOLLARD, A. M., 



PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND 
ACTING PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ELOCUTION, - 1891 . 

EDWARD FITCH, A. M., 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE 
AND GREEK LITERATURE, AND CLERK 

OF THE FACULTY, _ _ _ 1889 

CHARLES HENRY SMYTH, Jr., Ph. D., 

STONE PORFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
AND PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AMD MINERALOGY, - 1 89 1. 

Rev. WILLIAM HARDER SQUIRES, A. M., 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC, AND 

INSTRUCTOR IN HEBREW, - - 1 89 1. 

SAMUEL J. SAUNDERS, A. B., 

PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND INSTRUCTOR IN ASTRONOMY. 1 89 2 

MELVIN GILBERT DODGE, A. B., 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, AND LIBRARIAN, 1 89 2. 

DELOS DeWOLF SMYTH, A. B., 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC, ELOCUTION, ENG- 
LISH LITERATURE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, - 1 89 2. 

WILLIAM PIERCE SHEPARD, A. B., 

CURATOR OF THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, AND 

INSTRUCTOR IN BOTANY, - - 1892. 

WALTER THOMAS COUPER, A. B., 

ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN, - - 1892. 



rORMS or BEQUEST. 

/. / give and bequeath to the Trustees of Hamilton 
College, at Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y., the sum of 
Fifty Thousand Dollars for the endozv^nent of a professor- 
ship'in said college, to be called the Professor- 

ship, on condition that the principal shall never be used 
or diminished, but be securely invested, .and the net in- 
come and interest shall be devoted to the payme^it of the 
salary of the incumbent of said professorship. 

II. I give and bequeath to the Trustees of Hamilton 
College, at Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y., the sujn of 
Ten Thousand Dollars for the fotindation of a Lecture- 
ship in said College, to be called the Lectureship, 
on condition that the principal shall never be used or dimifi- 
ished, but be securely invested, and the net interest and 
income thereof shall be devoted to the payment of the salary 
of the incumbejtt, or incumbents, of said lectureship. 

III. I give and bequeath [etc. as above^ the sum of 
Ten Thousand Dollars to found a perpetual Fellowship in 
said College, to be 7tamed the Fellowship, the 
same to be invested a7id undiminished, and the interest to 
sustain some specially apt student in one year of study or 
research immediately following graduation, and subject to 
regulations to be adopted by the Faculty and approved by 
the Trustees. 

IV. I give and bequeath to the Trustees of Hamilton 
College, at Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y., Two Thousand 
Dollars, for the foimdation of a Perpettial Scholarship in 
said College, to be called the Scholarship, on 
condition that the same shall be securely invested, a7id the 
net interest used for the payment of the term bills of some 
^worthy scholar. 

V. I give and bequeath to the Trustees of Hamilton 
College, at Cli?iton, Oneida County, N. Y., Dol- 
lars, to be used for the immediate iiicrease of the Ha7nil- 
ton College Library, \_or to fill a?i Alcove, to be 7iamed the 

A Icove. ] 



*'It is my earnest wish that the Institution may 

GROW AND flourish ; THAT ITS ADVANTAGES MAY BE PER- 
MANENT AND EXTENSIVE ; AND THAT UNDER THE SMILES OF 

THE God of Wisdom, it may prove an eminent means of 

DIFFUSING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, ENLARGING THE BOUNDS OF 
HUMAN HAPPINESS, AND AIDING THE REIGN OF VIRTUE AND 

THE Kingdom of the Blessed Redeemer." 

SAMUEL KIRKLAND. 



Ibamllton CollcgCy 

Tlic President's RoomSy 
December, iSg2. 



To any AluTfinus or interested friend, Greeting: 

Solicited only by my eager desire by every means to 
rally all our Alumni, and to extend the influence of 
Hamilton, I beg leave to speak to you of the Haniilton 
Literary Monthly. 

This student publication reflects the current life of the 
College, registers its events and sentiment, exhibits its 
best literary prize work, and under the indefatigable care of 
Dr. North gives a constant record of the events in the 
lives of its Alumni. 

An increasing circulation would widen the circle of our 
friends and quicken their zeal. Our Alumni, by wisely 
placing their copies, when read, could direct many a pre- 
paratory student to Hamilton. 

The young men who make the present Board, and their 
successors, should be helped and impelled by the response 
of our graduate men. 

At my urging they have reduced the annual price from 
$3.00 to $2. 00: or, i^i.oo will pay for the last half of the 
year, beginning with the February number. I would ask 
you personally to help so good a cause by sending in your 
name and subscription, at your earliest convenience. 

Address, Editors Hamilton Literary Monthly, Clinton, 
N. Y. 

Will you not, at the same time, address to Dr. Edward 
North, a brief statement of your present activitys ? 

Yours hopefully, 

M. WOOLSEY STRYKER, 

President-elect. 



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